(National Taipei University of Technology)
At Sunset-City Wall Restoration Project
As the sun sets, a unique perception of time emerges, transcending mere minutes and numbers. In bustling Taipei, daylight fades quickly, yet a different sense of time envelops the ancient city walls of Hengchun, serving as tangible links to history.
A 290-meter stretch near Mount Houdong, untouched since the Qing Dynasty, serves as the starting point for wall restoration. The materiality of elements like bricks invokes a sensory perception of time and space, experienced through microscopic bodily perceptions, as if time beats with our own hearts.
The restoration of the city walls involves deconstructing twelve spaces, a manifestation of time’s fleeting nature. The current state of the walls shows signs of nature’s reclamation, with vegetation growth and wall damage. Structural reinforcement and features guide people back onto the walls, replacing the materiality of time with an embodied experience sensed through the body’s movements and connections with the environment.
Ascending Mount Houdong offers a chance to appreciate the city walls’ silhouette and the sun’s gradual descent. Using the eleven spaces as a pathway to a richer perceptual experience of time, this vantage point allows one to directly observe the subtle variations in the sun’s movement. The architectural space responds to the transient yet recurring nature of time, connecting history, nature, and human presence in a delicate dance of moments.
