Exhibition
展覽
The Red Brick Era of Northern Taiwan
北台灣的紅磚年代
Aug 29 & 30
8月29日-8月30日
Sat 12:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Sun 12:00 PM - 6:00 PM
About the Program
Guided by architectural historian Li Chien-lang's cutaway drawings, the exhibition traces the ties between Mackay and his contemporaries, and the red brick buildings they left behind. Following the seams of brick back through architectural history: how did a group of missionaries who sailed across the ocean knead the shape of home into a foreign land? Could traces of the missionaries’ work in Taiwan be found in Canadian architecture? And what important roles did renowned tea merchant Li Chunsheng and British businessman John Dodd play in the details of Taiwan’s red-brick buildings?
Visitors will step into a gallery styled like an unfolded old newspaper, combing column by column through the conflict and reconciliation hidden inside churches, hospitals and schools — watching brick after brick be endlessly deconstructed, translated, and given a new identity across the long river of history.
What "brick" will our generation leave to tell its story to the future?
Illustration by: Li Chien-LangCurator: Rita Chen
For more than four decades, Professor Li Chien-lang has traded the camera and measuring tape for a pencil, using intricate hand-drawn cutaway illustrations to unfold the timber framing and hidden histories of buildings like Oxford College and Mackay Hospital, layer by layer, on paper — making it possible for anyone, architect or not, to read an old house.
He has taught as a professor at Chinese Culture University, National Taipei University, and National Taiwan University of Arts, and has long served on government committees reviewing cultural heritage, moving between academic research and the front lines of historic preservation. His notable books, Dwellings for All and Palaces for the Divine are the accumulated fruit of decades spent drawing. In 2023, the Ministry of Culture honoured his lifelong dedication to preserving Taiwan's architectural memory with its National Cultural Heritage Preservation Award.
For Professor Li Chien-lang, a building has never been just brick and mortar — it is a way of narrating memory, identity, and era.
Ron Shieh completed his Master of Architecture from the University of Toronto after immigrating to Canada from Taiwan, and has operated his own firm for almost 40 years. An active member in the Taiwanese community, Ron has supported many initiatives and community projects over the years.
Ron Shieh is a member of the Ontario Association of Architects and the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada with a registered architectural practice in Ontario.
From the Curating Team
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TAIWANfest Toronto is grateful to be held on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples, that is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. We acknowledge our privilege to be gathered here, and commit to work with and be respectful to the Indigenous peoples of this land while we engage in meaningful conversations of culture and reconciliation.