d+a | Issue 125 • 2022

In spring, the peach blossom is a familiar sight across Taoyuan, a sprawling, often overlooked city in north-western Taiwan. Trees were planted as far back as the Qing Dynasty and have since become somewhat of a city symbol. In 2020, this delicate bloom—alongside many other inspirations—lent its colours and cultural history to the curatorial team of ‘Running Taoyuan’, a city exhibition designed to explore what lies beneath the seemingly bland façade of industry and airlines. Taoyuan is, after all, most renowned as the site of Taiwan’s largest international airport. In Mandarin Chinese, the title of the 2020 Creative Expo Taoyuan means ‘walking’. However, the same word sounds like ‘running’ in the local dialect, Taiwanese Hokkien—an intentional play on words. “‘Running Taoyuan’ represents the energy of movement,” says Yao-Pang Wang, the event’s Chief Curator and Director of Taiwanese curatorial studio, InFormat Design. “You can, through an expo, help a city advance.” The exhibition, which ran for ten days and was packed with displays, workshops, forums, and performances, was held in a uniquely challenging space, a former veteran’s village called New Matsu Village. These residential communities were built hastily all over Taiwan in the late 1940s and 1950s to house an influx of KMT soldiers who fled to the island nation from China at the end of the Chinese Civil War. The modest, one-storied homes of these hamlets nestle snugly against one another, defined by their red brick walls, grey-tiled roofs, humble open yards, and winding, narrow laneways. While many have been preserved as cultural centres, more than a few still house the original residents and their descendants. a wide-reaching strategy The venue had already been decided on when InFormat Design landed the contract for the project, which was administered by multiple bureaus and departments within the Taoyuan City Government—from agricultural and economics to Hakka and indigenous affairs. The curatorial strategy, therefore, needed to be wide-reaching. “We viewed the expo as an opportunity to shape Taoyaun’s cultural identity and future developments through design,” says Wang. “We wanted to make (the) people feel proud (of their city), so we engaged directly with all the stakeholders. Everybody became a kind of ‘small curator’ in the exhibition.” With such an organic approach, the exhibition took close to nine months to prepare. The process involved everything from endless hours of field research—“we went to the mountains, 40 design and architecture #125 firm INFORMAT DESIGN components EXHIBITIONS, WORKSHOPS, FORA & PERFORMANCES duration 10 DAYS location TAOYUAN, TAIWAN project city exhibition - running taoyuan