ABSTRACT
The Red House and the Kaohsiung Museum of History are located in Taipei and Kaohsiung respectively. These are two major cities in northern and southern Taiwan; they also represent Taiwan’s two different senses of metropolitan development – derived from external forces and the country’s geopolitical character. The analyses of Taipei’s ‘political-cultural’ history and Kaohsiung’s ‘cultural-political’ history along with these two buildings from their earlier settlements to the present have shed light on the characteristics of spatiality in post-war Taiwan. When referring to a broader context of post-war Taiwan’s built environment, and its implications for the theorisation of Asia Pacific’s architecture and urbanism, it is necessary to analyse the issues implied beyond this cultural-political interaction between today’s Taiwan society and its corresponding architectural representations. Owing to the openness of native society and the awakening public consciousness, i.e. the commencement of democratisation from the late 1980s onwards, Taiwan’s social indigenisation has also emerged since then. Intersubjective criticism as a method of approach began to lead popular discourses in Taiwan society instead of a previously one-sided explanation. Heteroglossic perspectives in native historiography are evidence of this phenomenon. Martial Law was lifted in 1987, and from that year onwards, there was a series of socio-political reforms, such as the lifting of the bans on newspaper publishing, the end of the Chiang regime 1 and the biggest massive student demonstration which asked for democratic reform against the Nationalist Government’s authoritarian system. 2 These reforms, to a certain extent, enlightened the senses of ‘civil society’ in Taiwan in the 1990s (Kuo, 2009). Most importantly, Taiwan’s characteristic multiplicity has risen to the surface, replacing the longstanding social suppression as the mainstream value of modern society in Taiwan.
