Ruin Academy Lounge Casagrande Laboratory & JUT Foundation AdDa

Ruin Academy (established 2010) is an independent cross-over architectural

research center Center or centre may refer to: Mathematics *Center (geometry), the middle of an object * Center (algebra), used in various contexts ** Center (group theory) ** Center (ring theory) * Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentricit ...

in the Urban Core area of

Taipei City Taipei (), officially Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Located in Northern Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about southwest of the ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

. It is 'set to re-think the industrial city and the modern man in the box' through research and a series of

workshop Beginning with the Industrial Revolution era, a workshop may be a room, rooms or building which provides both the area and tools (or machinery) that may be required for the manufacture or repair of manufactured goods. Workshops were the on ...

s. The Ruin Academy occupies an abandoned 5-story apartment building in central Taipei. All the interior walls of the building and all the windows are removed in order to grow

bamboo Bamboos are a diverse group of evergreen perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family. The origin of the word "bamboo" is uncertain, ...

and vegetables inside the house. The plants are situated so that their vegetation grows in front of the glassless window spaces, giving privacy to those inside. The

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

s and students are sleeping and working in mahogany made

ad hoc Ad hoc is a Latin phrase meaning literally 'to this'. In English, it typically signifies a solution for a specific purpose, problem, or task rather than a generalized solution adaptable to collateral instances. (Compare with '' a priori''.) C ...

dormitories and have a public

sauna A sauna (, ), or sudatory, is a small room or building designed as a place to experience dry or wet heat sessions, or an establishment with one or more of these facilities. The steam and high heat make the bathers perspire. A thermometer in a ...

in the 5th floor. All the building is penetrated with 6 inch holes in order to let “rain inside”. ''The architectural control is in a process of giving up in order to let nature to step in. So far it is not giving up – it is too lazy. Architectural control will be given up. Modernism is lost and the industrial machine will become organic. This happens in Taipei and this is what we study. Ruin Academy is an organic machine.'' Ruin is viewed as a tipping point when a man-made object becomes part of nature.

Research Topics

The research and design workshops engage with

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

urban design Urban design is an approach to the design of buildings and the spaces between them that focuses on specific design processes and outcomes. In addition to designing and shaping the physical features of towns, cities, and regional spaces, urban d ...

and

environmental art Environmental art is a range of artistic practices encompassing both historical approaches to nature in art and more recent ecological and politically motivated types of works. Environmental art has evolved away from formal concerns, for example ...

. Anarchic Grandmothers, Academic Squatting, Urban Acupuncture-these are some of the ideas behind the Ruin Academy. The Academy workshops include: Organic Acupuncture (spontaneous and often illegal urban farms and

community gardens A community garden is a piece of land gardened or cultivated by a group of people individually or collectively. Normally in community gardens, the land is divided into individual plots. Each individual gardener is responsible for their own plo ...

balancing the industrial Taipei and tuning the city towards the organic); "River Urbanism (

landscape urbanism Landscape urbanism is a theory of urban design arguing that the city is constructed of interconnected and ecologically rich horizontal field conditions, rather than the arrangement of objects and buildings. Landscape Urbanism, like Infrastructural ...

); "Illegal Architecture" (Architecture that uses the city energy source, like a

parasite Parasitism is a close relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives on or inside another organism, the host, causing it some harm, and is adapted structurally to this way of life. The entomologist E. O. Wilson has ...

. Casagrande adds, “many spontaneous and often illegal communities are growing that are more complex and fruitful than official development and official architecture – often blindly directed by economy and centralised politics. Anarchist grandmothers are cultivating illegal community gardens and urban farms everywhere around Taipei. They are breaking the city.” The Academy is focused in the research of the ruining processes of Taipei that keep the city alive. The International Society of Biourbanism published in 2013 Marco Casagrande's book ''Biourban Acupuncture - From Treasure Hill of Taipei to Artena'', which explains the operations, methodology and aims of the Ruin Academy in detail. For the industrial cities, biourban acupuncture offers a path to achieve the Third Generation City. Cities, to be the fall of the machine, where “the ruin” is the reality produced by nature, that reclaims the artefact. Biourbanism happens, when nature force takes the initiative, affects the design of industrial society, and becomes co- architect. The Ruin Academy received the ''World Architecture Community Award'' in 2011. The Academy is operated by the Taiwanese JUT Foundation for Arts & Architecture, in cooperation with Finland-based Casagrande Laboratory.

Anarchist Gardener

The Ruin Academy publishes an independent free newspaper, the ''Anarchist Gardener'', edited by Nikita Wu. The newspaper is an open form collage of the Academy's thinking on the future of the built human environment. A special issue of the newspaper has been produced for the Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism 2012 . and for the Austrian Museum of Contemporary art MAK exhibition Eastern Promises, 2013.Mensch
nbsp;– Mensch 2013

References

External links

Urban Ruins: Abandoned Building Houses Architecture Academy
Web Ecoist
Ruin Academy
Designklub
Ruin Academy
Archello
Ruin Academy
Urbipedia
Farming in a Ruin
Jeroen Beekmans, The Pop-Up City
Anarchist Gardener II – Hong Kong special
Nikita Wu, Ruin Academy {{authority control 2010 establishments in Taiwan Educational institutions established in 2010 Research institutes in Taiwan Architecture schools Social philosophy Urban exploration Squats Urban planning in Taiwan Biophilia hypothesis Squatting in Taiwan