Heito, Taiwan
Designed by Yi-Hsien Lee and ECG International Landscape Consultants, the Heito 1909 project transformed Taiwan’s historical sugar factory into a public gathering place, reimagining the wasteland barrier that struck a decade ago and integrated community resources around the city.
Significantly, the park provides people a place to engage in quality natural environment within the metropolitan city.
This preservation and adaptive reuse of the ruins into the landscape is the first and only in Taiwan.
The unique design creatively incorporates the ruins and damaged structures into an urban facility for people to experience.
The design endeavored to recover and identify its remaining structure.
An underground factory and five waste water basins are found in the park, the foundation of the structure are intact, create a typology challenge to adaptive into public facility.
The ruins are like microscope of Pingtung’s (Heito) history, different type of pavilions interpretations each section of history, a time of exploration and agriculture.
In 1895, a city was born out of sugar. During the 16th colonization era, sugar was a profitable commodity.
The Dutch East India Company developed a sugar industry in Taiwan, due to its geographical location and climate.
In 1909, the Heito Sugar Factory started to operate the sugar industry stimulating Heito’s development.
From 1910, the Governor fully implemented the Street Urban Development laying the foundation as a modern city.
In 1939-1945, the US Navy conducted bombing raids during World War II, since cane sugar was an important cash crop and strategic goods such as by-product alcohol could be used as fuel. As a concequence, Heito Sugar Factory and Heito Airport became the main targets for the Allied attacks.
Between 1977 and 1994, there was an awareness of Industrial pollution. Because the sugarcane refinery created a large amount of bagasse, a factory was built to transform the waste into paper.
From 1994-2018, the paper factory was closed as a result of the rising protests of environmental pollution and was abandoned.
Public entry was forbidden since 1909’s most buildings were buried and the park remained a mystery to the public for a century.
The major work of this project is to research and find out the potential, existing structure as a starting point providing a story to play with.
Rather than obsessing with iconic buildings, by modifying the existing structures into different functions, the architects create a “deduction way of the design process,” creating a new possibility and outcome.
All the factories buildings had been demolished in 1994. The remaining structures were the two factories’ underground foundations and five water basins in different size variations.
The factory buildings are pure functional and efficient structures. The geometrical shape of the structures creates a typology challenge for reinterpret into civil use.
Project: Heito 1909, Taiwan
Architects: Yi-Hsien Lee and Associates YHLAA
Landscape Architects: ECG International Landscape Consultants