Resisting from within: the Ita Thao house and settlement as breeding ground for design innovation

After the 1999 Jiji earthquake razed most of the built environment on the shores of Sun Moon Lake, in the center of Taiwan, architect Hsieh Ying-Chun prompted the Ita Thao community to occupy their original settlement site, which they had been forcibly removed from fifty years earlier. The architect applied a construction technique involving bamboo sidings and a light steel post-and-beam structure that allowed unskilled labor as well as women and children to take part in the construction. Hsieh’s own house sits at the far end of the settlement: being now the main (though unofficial) headquarters of Atelier-3, the bamboo-sided, three-room house acts as a physical mediator between the community and the local authorities that have repeatedly attempted to remove the Thao from the lakeside settlement in order to develop it for touristic purposes. The Ita Thao village has become a symbol of resistance to governmental mistreatment of aboriginals; for Hsieh Ying-Chun it has offered a home where he has been residing for almost 20 years as well as a testing ground for what is now an extensive design-build practice specialized in post-disaster housing and settlements across Taiwan and China. In this progression, it is possible to trace the element of innovation of the lightweight steel member and its role from politically disruptive device to a multiplier allowing for a large-scale effectiveness of design.