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Shao-Yu Huang, National Taipei University of Technology, TaiwanAbstract
Contemporary architectural development in Taiwan is defined by a compressed phenomenon, wherein the discipline operates as an externally transplanted and fragmented system rather than a linear cultural evolution. Within this landscape, architectural history manifests as an interpretive phenomenon—a constructed discourse necessitating an atypical historical archive. Consequently, professional journals in Taiwan perform a role distinct from Western traditions: they do not merely record history but produce it discursively. Endowed with a half-century legacy as the institutional organ of the National Association of Architects, Taiwan Architect (TA) functions as the definitive repository of professional memory. In the pre-globalisation era, TA operated as a critical discursive portal, facilitating the transnational translation of theoretical frameworks and anchoring a discipline in transition. By synthesising Colomina’s (1994) proposition of media as a site of architectural construction and Speaks’s (1993, p. 6) conceptualisation of writing as “invisible infrastructure”, this paper argues that TA’s “fragmented assembly-like texts” constitute the primary ontological site of identity negotiation. These assemblages are not historical voids but the active material of Taiwan’s modern architectural derivation. The critical argument posits that interpretive historiography emerges as an idiosyncratic manifestation of the Taiwanese condition, wherein the professional archive acts as a surrogate for traditional historical continuity. Within this framework, mediated representation functions as the primary historiographical act. This research proposes that in compressed modernities, this “Taiwanese method” establishes the institutional archive as the foundational site for an indigenous tradition—one born from, and sustained by, the continuous process of mediated interpretation.
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Conference: ECAH2026Stream: Humanities - History, Historiography
This paper is part of the ECAH2026 Conference Proceedings (View)
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