This is the 7th year for the Department of Architecture (DOA) to co-host a forum with the Council for Cultural Affairs (CCA) of the Executive Yuan and the Department of Urban Development Taipei City Government on “Take a stroll in the City—forum on urban design”. The event has always been linked with big names so it has somewhat acquired a positive reputation which has been a boost to DOA of TKU.

The forum runs from October 6th to December 29th at 6 p.m. on every Wednesday at the auditorium of the CCA. There are usually discussion sessions with two discussants for each topic inviting all participants to join in the dialogue. This Wednesday, October 27, it is scheduled to have Dr. Flora Chang, TKU President, and the Principal of the Yangguang Elementary School of Hsin Chu, Lin Bi-hsia, on “Skateboarding to school”, chaired by Jeng Hoang-ell, a professor of DOA.

Professor Jeng, who chairs all sessions, believes a forum as such allows various voices to be heard so as to inspire great debate, which in turn benefits creativity. He gauges the success of a session by the heated post-discussion among the audiences who usually leave the venue continuing talking with disturbing looks on their faces.

These audiences also include many of his students. Sun Yi-yun, a junior from the Chinese Department is one of them, who enjoys his class, entitled “Architecture—be a friend with life”, so much that she ‘dragged’ many of her friends along to his lecture. She and others will participate in the forum as they see urban design an integral part of their life. It is easy to relate to and can teach them some useful things about urban living.

The themes for 13 discussion sessions range from “A cultural person and an urbanite, who is more modern?” to “A skyscraper, a living philosophy?” to “Is it possible to work 3 hours per day?” They all invariably deal with spatial planning. Other discussants, apart from Dr. Flora Chang and Li Bi-hsia, are Chen Chi-nan, the Chairman of the CCA, Tseng shu-cheng, the Dean of the General Affairs of Tainan National University of the Arts and Chen ming-xun, the CEO of Taipei Financial Group, aka Taipei 101. Check out more details at http://www.arch.tku.edu.tw.