A Tale of Two Buildings in Nantou / fabersociety

NT46 and NT88 are self-built houses by villagers. The main brick-concrete structure of the building no longer meets safety regulations and requires overall structural reinforcement. Usually hidden or irrelevant, this seemingly inconspicuous "standard process" actually has extremely symbolic meaning in our eyes: an urban village may not be "high-end", but its bottom line should be safety and dignity that translate into care and respect for locals. Only above this bottom line can we have the mood and necessity to continue the discussion. Nantou is evolving from temporary to permanent, marginal to normative, vague to clear, and a new urban identity and historical mission are being implanted. Therefore, we developed a consistent expression in both projects: turning structural reinforcement into visible exteriorization, leaving behind recognizable new layers that form a new logic and ethics. The design strategy of strictly inheriting the existing structural system, and reinforcing areas only where there are deficiencies through calculation, is a standard practice. However, making system-level adjustments to the structure and avoiding large-area component reinforcement is another kind of specificness. The idea of avoiding reinforcement of large-area components to preserve the original appearance of the existing building not only meets the minimum intervention requirements but also respects those who are emotionally bound to the building in a sense.