(Written by Li-Yu Hsu)  

Today, vice mayor of Taipei City came to visit and report to the press about the case of Xinglong Public Housing Block 2 (興隆二區公宅). This case was there in former mayor's time, and finally, in this June, the architectural construction is completed. However, concerning that residents will be moving in, it's hard for architects to relax. New work for us just started! 

Compared with Xinglong Public Housing Block 1 (興隆一區公宅) executed by J. J. Pan & Partners, Architects & Planners (潘冀建築師事務所), Block 2 immensely increases the space for social welfare (30%+70%). For example, in low level, it has care centers for kids & elders; service center for the handicapped; it also has a little farm land, independent space for youth, and handicapped families. Intense care family taken by social welfare department also resides here. 

The spatial planning of this place is quite demanding, concerning the dilemma between management and the necessary social interaction. On one hand, our team asked the department of social welfare to assist to understand people's needs for life, so to put it into spatial planning; on another hand, we tried to create community space with different layers among the high level architectural development. So, for instance, we designed the social welfare space in lower level; air walk corridors in higher level; so to serve a platform for social community activities and neighboring. We hope this can be a satisfactory response to the needs of every resident. 

The construction gradually comes to the final. Our team, who all deemed ourselves people's "homemakers", hopes that residents can feel our goodwill in the design embedded in architectural design. Nevertheless, we know that there will always be somewhat unsatisfactory. Still, we believe that architects should try to learn from the user's experience and feedback so to know how to improve architectural designs. If we can find out a more progressive approach of spatial planning, we might enable public housing better fulfilling to its social purpose inside the city.