Home, Taipei Jungle Development, Yangming Mountain Building, Taiwanese Architecture

Ultra-Ruin Taiwan

Taiwanese jungle farmhouse – design by Marco Casagrande, architect

26 Feb 2014

Ultra-Ruin Farmhouse

Design: Marco Casagrande

Location: Taiwan

Ultra-Ruin is a wooden architectural organism that is growing from the ruins of an abandoned red brick farmhouse in the meeting place of terraced farms and jungle. The weak architecture follows the principles of Open Form and is improvised on the site based on instincts reacting on the presence of jungle, ruin and local knowledge.

The complex has a variety of multi-functional spaces and platforms that can be activated for different living functions and for meditation. The spatial continuity between interior and exterior spaces is flexible – also the inside is out and the jungle is in the house. The Ultra-Ruin is an architectural instrument played by nature including human. The main user is a private family, but the space is occasionally opened up for wider meetings.

Ultra-Ruin is more of an organic accident, than based on industrial control. Accident is greater than architectural control. Architectural control has been opened up in order to let nature to step in and human error to take place. In order to understand the dynamics of an accident one must be present. To be present is the key of all art.

Architecture is not an independent language and architecture is not talking alone. Architecture needs nature to become part of nature. Ultra-Ruin is a post-ruin condition, where human has come back to the house / ruin and share the same space with jungle.

Ultra-Ruin Taipei – Building Information

Architect: Marco Casagrande
Project Manager: Nikita Wu
C-LAB team: Frank Chen, Yu-Chen Chiu
Location: Yangming Mountain, Taipei, Taiwan
Site: ruin of an abandoned farm house and surrounding terraced farms
Interior space: 210 m2
Materials: Mahogany, Zelkova, Camphor, Taiwan Cypress, bronze, steel, stone
Completed: 2013

Photos: AdDa Zei

• The first model of the Ultra-Ruin was realized for the Victorial & Albert Museum in London, 2009. The now realized villa / ruin in Taiwan has grown out of this seed.