Located in Taoyuan city, Taiwan, agricultural farm-pond is a historical and humane landscape. The pond irrigation system was the ancestor’s intention to increase the effective rainfall to overcome the particular climate pattern. A hundred years back, the area of farm ponds were more than a thousand units which area was 8900ha and covered 11.8% of Taoyuan. Farm pond was not only the agricultural heritage but also played an important role in ecology and community society. As time goes by, it gradually become a unique cultural landscape for Taoyuan.
RTF Sustainability Awards 2017
First Award | Category: Landscape Design
| Project Details | |
| Architect: | Yutzu Lai |
| Team Members: | Li Wei Chou |
| University: | Tunghai University |
| Country: | Taiwan |
©Yutzu Lai
However, 6000 ha of farm ponds have disappeared by the urbanization, lots of farm ponds were re-filled. Furthermore, currently a policy came with government’s determined for renewable energy development in such waste land properties, the farm ponds faces a new transition. As a landscape architect and local citizen, we would like to take an important role for seeking a win-win solution to deal with such conflict issues.
©Yutzu Lai
What we want to do is through the preservation of its original functions and use innovative ways to protect this culture, let it connect to surroundings and become a unit of community. Turning farm pond into a space where people can get rest in city but also have the capability to absorb natural disaster.
- Introduce renewable energy into our site and let residents become the owner of solar panel by voluntary participation, arousing their awareness of environmental protection.
- Take our experimental site as center, spreading out the idea of rebuild farm pond around Taoyuan city making city become a sustainable landscape.
- Cooperate with the school to cultivate people’s knowledge of farm pond culture and value to environment.
- Import square and natural playground into the experimental site and make it become a park for urban space. In normal time, the park will be playground, however; when torrential rain come, the park will become a buffer space for city
- Creating a space where people can get rest and get close to nature by turn the levee into grass slope.
