​基隆沙灣歷史文化園區

The project initiated an ongoing urban redevelopment initiative. It started with a competition held by the city, and it was at first a public work financed by a hodgepodge of subsidies from the central government. The competition was open but required the submission of a planning proposal and some design guidelines. Once adjudicated, the project has gone through an intense development process that saw it debated with the municipal offices, the financing bodies, and the local stakeholders.

The site is jammed between the harbor, once militarized, and the road infrastructure, constrained by a close promontory. Due to geographic-historical reasons, here one could find several heritage pieces -e.g., a French cemetery dating back to the Sino-French war, seaside villas from the Japanese era, etc.- but these were accessible to archaeological research only. The rest was occupied by illegal superfetations and fenced plots of land, often used as private car parking.

The project consisted of demolishing a disused military facility, removing superfetations, developing walkable surfaces, opening the enclosures, and reorganizing the open space in consideration of some programmatic interventions. Today, if something is still to be implemented due to interactions with other projects, we are planning some additional landscape interventions together with a path linking to a historical fortification closely located. This should further consolidate the interweaving of heritage and daily life that characterizes this new “neighborhood core.”

Indeed, the project targeted the creation of a new public space based on an intense mix of socially relevant functions or spaces, elaborating on and reinterpreting the existing resources. Due to this, the urban design is based on topographic work balancing spatial continuity and the definition of gathering areas. Also, it aims at offering an ordering principle to facilitate the coexistence of residents' lives and the activities of the people from the neighborhood and beyond.

Today, the site features a historical Japanese villa where a new bookshop will be open, a kids’ play area, a semi-natural amphitheater facing historical remnants -adequate for the frequent neighborhood events, a square adjacent to an old walk-up -where someone is already opening a coffee-shop, space for the extension of the residents’ activity outdoor, two different memorials -that are used for seasonal celebrations, and the French cemetery, now opened up as a park.