Everything starts with an idea. It is like the northern star to the practice. When we started Linearscape in 2011, we just completed our first competition entry New Taipei City Museum of Contemporary Art. The proposal creates a cultural campus that inspires the divergent forces of nature and urbanity, ideas and reality, and art and quotidian life to converge and dissolve into a fluid environment in which those forces become symbiotic and nourish the vivacity of New Taipei City. The museum will not only connect the city and its people to art but will also serve as a bridge connecting the city and to its riverfront. Art is a reflection of life and culture. This design strives to generate an environment where art, artists, and the people and lifestyles from whom it was inspired converge to create a forum in which to experience and contribute to the creation of art. Aside from providing many public spaces for viewing art an attempt was made to experience art as the echo of everyday life. Programmatic elements such as artist studios and residences, affordable art stores and many restaurants have been interwoven into the program. The interlocking of spaces creates many opportunities for the visitor to see and to be seen and interact with the environment. The design of museum minimizes waste and takes advantage of its natural setting by integrating structure and MEP systems into thermally active surfaces that not only support the building but also sustainably contribute to its heating, cooling and power requirements.

At that time, we were at the beginning of figuring out what our practice would be. We knew the strength of our design was centered on the connection between people and its environment, the intimate relationship between the man-made and the nature, which was not only reflected on the spatial quality, but also on the building systems and energy consumptions. We were fascinated by the interlocking of space and hybridity of the programmatic elements, which worked as the catalyst to encourage human interaction and to promote a vibrant way of life. Certain ideas started to appear more clearly to us. A manifesto of our practice came into existence.

Architecture begins with drawing a line in the landscape. A physical line and a symbolic line, representing the movement and connection from urban environments to architecture, architecture to landscape, form to function, and structure to tectonics. This network of lines interweaves to form a field of activities that together generate a Linearscape.

We established three main practicing areas that would engage nature, nurture ecosystems and cultivate connections between people and place. We are committed to work that is socially and environmentally responsible. Our work has an intimate connection with nature and emerges from a respect for the elements of earth, water, vegetation, and topography. We believe that mutually beneficial relationships between the built and natural environment lead the path toward a Linearscape, the design philosophy behind our work. It never stays the same, constantly evolving from place to place and time to time. ‘Linear’ centers on the notion that spaces should respond to the flow of people, as in their direction, density, and speed of movement. ‘Scape’ is derived from the continuation of the landscape, as in the physical characteristics of the land, topography, site, and context. These influences converge and arise to generate a Linearscape, celebrating openness, transparency, and connection between people and place.

Our design philosophy was further validated with the award-winning project, Symbiopia, an imagined symbiotic waterfront community that combines a vertical hydroponic farming facility with a multifaceted urban landscape, that is interwoven between a web of existing infrastructure, to connect a low-income community to its waterfront. The project was the first to successfully address our interests in complex urban design issues such as equitable access to fresh food, sustainable economic development, waste management, and infrastructure in a design that fostered symbiotic relationships between the community, environment, and local economy. The idea of symbiotic relationships between the built environment and ecosystem goes beyond the notion of sustainability. We want to explore the ideas beyond the proposals of a few wind turbines or solar harvesting methods. We are interested in investigating solutions that are mutually beneficial to the built environment, local community and economy and ecosystem we are inseparable from and how we can thrive from the coexistence of multiple systems. Through this project and subsequent projects such as Reimagining Rockaway and Manufacturing Gowanus, the pursuit of Symbiotic Urbanism, which creates synergetic urban infrastructure that merges the interests of the communities, the environment and public realm, evolves and continues to guide our practice. We explore its possibilities and applications through design proposals, research projects, and multidisciplinary collaborations.

You can check out more of Linearscape’s work on their website.