The fundamental (root) of urban spatial condition begins with its smallest dimensions, human scale constraints. This thesis tries to carefully document and map these micro interactions between public and private domain in relationship to human body within an urban context.
With human scale constraints as basis for a set of spatial text, one is able to construct a logic set or syntax that reflects the programmatic interface between white (accessible), grey (visually accessible) and black (inaccessible).
Kwanghwa antique market is a very intriguing site, where the architecture, multiple levels of very dense internal shopping streets, transforms itself during different time of day due to very dramatic program change. The Market not only represents an explicit architecture mutation due to programmatic shift, it also implicitly altered the buying and selling behavior. What was a storage cabinet in the morning unfolds into DVD stands and stall partitions at night. Unstructured order or structured chaos that constantly adapt itself to new programming is what characterized Taipei city’s urban identity.
Conceptual Development, 4 steps
1. <Site analysis>
Visual and tactile mapping of the antique market space through the human scales of buyers, voyeurs, travelers, and sellers. The map is developed base on a simple figure ground plan of different time and different height in relationship to the human body. The Market transfigures its figure ground or its B/W configuration as the program mutates from Jade market in the morning into porn DVD shopping mall.
2. <Sectional text>
Choosing the elements from documented plan （B/W/G） to map sectional text.
3. <Planar text>
Translating sectional texts into models , then to slice them into planar texts and to define connectional points of interface .
4. <Syntax and architecture reconfigured>
Because Shin Kong Mitsukoshi department
store, A9, symbolized the fashionable and regular culture which is contrast to intriguing phenomena of studying site , step 4 tries to reconfigure A9 by filling the planar text（step 3）into original plans . How to fill is to refer to re-programming table and connectional rules . After 4 steps are completed , A9 is reconfigured to have a new façade , that means it is not just only to deal with human scale in early time but to affect and reconsider urban context .
key word：human scale constraints, syntax, Interface, reconfigured