Hello！My Little House

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Hello！My Little House

2018.04.28 - 2019.09.01 KCMA Gallery 101

Participating Architects＆Artists
Le-ching Chiang＋Ko-chieh Chin ;
Chia-chang Hsu＋Puppet and Its Double Theater;
Hom Liou＋Tang Tang;
Chinlun Lee ; Meng-hsuan Kuan; Croter Hung; Cecil Tang; Kuen-lin Tsai

Dear children,

Each day, we come out of our homes. In the city there are houses here and houses there. So many houses everywhere!

People are always thinking about how to build houses. Since the beginning of time, there have been little houses and big houses. Different periods of history and different ethnic groups have created various styles of building. The Egyptian pyramids, the Parthenon in Athens, the Great Wall of China, the Colosseum in Rome, Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, the Forbidden City in Beijing… some are tombs, others are temples, some are defensive city walls, places of entertainment, or the palace residences of kings and emperors. For thousands of years, they have conquered time, quietly telling their stories.

Have you ever drawn a house? What should it look like? Should it be triangular, square, rectangular or circular? Can it be straight and upright, or tilted and on a slant? Sometimes big, sometimes small, can it be something you can take with you? In reality, you need a design before you can build a house. A person who designs houses is called an architect.

To do their job, an architect has to work with lots of different people and has to travel to lots of different places. They ask questions like: what are we building? Who will live there? Where will it be built? How will it be built? Is a sheet metal dwelling suitable for rainy, subtropical Taiwan? How do you build a house in a desert climate to provide shelter from high temperatures and sandstorms? Is it better to use glass and metal, or wood and bamboo? There is so much to think about.

Indeed, building a house is not such an easy task. Look at My Little House, open it up, go inside and wave your arms about, walk around, and discover a series of amazing scenes. Then think again, what kind of house would you like to live in?

Dear parents and teachers,

What is architecture? In simple terms, we could say that it is the practice of designing and constructing any structure that provides shelter from the elements and satisfies our need for somewhere to live. Once this and other basic needs are taken care of, however, people begin to demand beauty as well as functionality, and architecture becomes art. Thus, Goethe wrote, “Architecture is frozen music.”

Why is architecture important? Buildings are significant cultural symbols. The pyramids represent the synthesis of power and craftsmanship; the Acropolis of Athens is the ultimate product of urban and political development; the Taj Mahal symbolizes undying love; and the Forbidden City embodies China’s imperial authoritarian power and the apex of its artistic achievement. Architecture has never just been about providing shelter; it concerns political power, religious fervor, cultural expression, and the transmission of memory. It bears witness to and reflects the development of human civilization, social values and aesthetics. As many great philosophers and writers like Victor Hugo have observed, architecture is “history written in stone.”

What then is the power of architecture? Can it influence the pulse of life in our cities and shape our daily lives? When France’s iconic Eiffel Tower was completed in 1889, it was initially derided and disliked. The writer Guy de Maupassant is said to have detested it so much that he often ate at the restaurant at its base because that was the only place in Paris where he could avoid seeing it. In the early 20^th century, the flat roofs and white boxes of the modernist residential buildings at the Weissenhof project (Weissenhofsiedlung) in Stuttgart designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and others were mocked for being a non-native “Arab village” (Araberdorf). Then, the exposed pipes on the outside of the Pompidou Centre in Paris angered critics when it opened in 1977. These archetypal buildings still have the power to converse with us across time.

Because architecture and our daily life are so closely intertwined, people see the buildings around them with such familiarity that they no longer notice them. The purpose of this exhibition is not to teach architectural language or how to recognize genres, but to rekindle the flames of the imagination, to stimulate curiosity and passion in everyone who visits. In the exhibition room, the My Little House created through cooperation between architects and artists allows us to observe, explore and experience how buildings convey messages. Importantly, it asks how architecture expresses space and the soul of a place. Why is it like this? And not like that? Why choose to use natural materials instead of metals? The exhibition invites you to experience the reason why "buildings speak" and to consider what kind of architectural landscape we really want in the current age of information technology and environmental crisis.

Mirror of the World-Gifts to KMFA 2021-2023
2024.03.23 - 2024.05.19

2024 Kaohsiung Award
2024.02.10 - 2024.04.28

Upcoming│CAPTURING THE MOMENT
2024.06.29 - 2024.11.17

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Exhibition

Hello！My Little House

Mirror of the World-Gifts to KMFA 2021-2023

2024 Kaohsiung Award

Upcoming│CAPTURING THE MOMENT