Preserving Cultural Heritages: Sustaining Social Diversities - From the Treasure Hill Co-living Settlement to the Building and Planning Research Foundation at the National Taiwan University

To accompany the 'Cultural Heritage of Taiwan: Diversity and Transformation' exhibition, three lectures offer reflections upon different aspects of Taiwan’s Cultural Heritage.

Preserving Cultural Heritages: Sustaining Social Diversities - From the Treasure Hill Co-living Settlement to the Building and Planning Research Foundation at the National Taiwan University

Professor Shenglin Elijah Chang, Graduate Institute of Building and Planning, National Taiwan University

This lecture focuses upon the preservation of the Treasure-Hill community in Taipei. Treasure-Hill is a fringe hill-side settlement of about 100 urban squatters and their families. After the Second World War, the retreat of the Nationalist government resulted in the rapid migration of more than 330,000 immigrants from mainland China. A shortage of housing supply was partially compensated by self-help squatter buildings mushrooming at various blocks and areas in the city, many of which were designated as urban parks for future land use. This lecture examines the Treasure-Hill Settlement as a cultural landscape and how it illuminates discourses on the relationships it shares with the surrounding natural environment, its local history and the community and, how it seems to contradict the rationale of Taipei's modernist planning which prioritises urban function as a whole over the collective memories of the few.

This lecture is presented in partnership with the Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Birmingham