Incredible sectional shear of a tree covered hill at a rest stop in Osaka, Japan. Crisp lines of the triangular retaining structure converge at one single red maple at the apex.
Urbanmatic is a collection of environments and urban spaces that are off most radars; spaces that we hustle in and out of everyday here in Taipei and other places we've lived-in, visited, or longed to visit. Urbanmatic is a by-product of modern cities, scripting its new found contexts as it evolves.
These are places and spaces that inspired us.
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urbanmatic
These are places and spaces that inspired us.
• About us
urbanmatic
A TIGHT TIGHT TIGHT parking solution in Kyoto: this beetle’s trunk is tugged under the ground floor slab, on what looks like an impossible 30degrees angle! The front bumper is just a hair away from kissing the front gate.
X marks the spot: this crossing has markings on it that read: “weekday” followed by the time slots pedestrians are allowed to cross. The writings are quite illegible from the ground level, and by the time you get to where you can read them clearly, you’re already in the midst of on-coming traffic!
A house design for sale in a store in Kyoto that carries candles, incense, ceramics, and other smaller craft and design items. This looks a lot better than the American developer plans readily available for sale from the internet. I would really love to visit a store where you can buy home designs like you do clothes in a boutique.
[Flash 10 is required to watch video]
On now at the Illinois Institute of Technology designed by Mies van der Rohe, Warhol’s Silver Clouds (first created in 1966) playfully subverts the severity of Miesian modernism. Formless, structureless, and mesmerizing. This have got to be the most interactive spatial Warhol piece. (video by seensaidheard)
I kid you not. This is the “Glorious Light of Christ Church” in the grungy industrial area of Banqiao. The cross on top is flanked by 2 giant eagles each clutching a giant ball (a repeating motif on the building). The building typology is seriously way-off here. A new christian sect that loves excesses or perhaps they bought the wrong set of plans and elevations? Or are they simply masking orange neo-classical baroque ‘luxury” apartments with a religious front for other despicable, dubious purposes?
This food bar in the access lane between 2 buildings with its crappy hand written oil-stained cardboard signage and the home made DIY shelves has been there for well over 10 years.
In the early 90s, the Taipei government legalized all illegal structures built before 1989 as it proved impossible to dismantle 1/3 of the city- obviously. My guess is, this closet of a shop must’ve been left from that time. There is quite a steady stream of customers within this 1.5m wide shop throughout the day. Perhaps the food tastes extra good without any refrigeration. As to accessing the backs of the 2 buildings from the street, the tenants must have found other alternative ways.
The Venice Biennale for architecture this year has Kazuyo Sejima as its curator, who recently announced her curatorial intent of bringing back the real essence of architecture: space and material without trendy fluff. This leaves me thinking that no matter how hard architects try, architecture and space can never have the abstract power felt at the installation created by artist Teresa Margolles in the Mexican pavilion last year. In a few empty rooms, families of the victims of Mexican gang violence repetitively mobs a mixture of their blood and biological remains (collected from morgues) onto the floor over and over again, layers upon layers; yet everything stays pretty much invisible except for the mop and bucket. The layer of human remains, the smell of death and the sorrows of the families transcended architecture space and materiality in the most profound way, imbuing the space with a primal awareness of human destruction and extinction.
A lamp post on Cole Street in San Francisco wears this organic crust of rusty staples after years of poster abuses.
Once a year, this truly unique “Proxy Street”, a two-block stretch in Taipei comes alive. I call this place the “Proxy Street” as this is where corporate battles are fought out and where hostile take-overs are engineered by this phenomenon of “proxy for gifts”. Here, the grey-area practice of getting small shareholders to sign over their proxy in exchange for gifts (mostly cheap stuff like tissue paper, utility knives, etc.) is openly carried out from May till the end of June, when the law requires all listed companies to hold their annual general shareholder meeting before the June 30th deadline.
