Environmental History Group Lecture

Speaker:
Yu-han Huang (Doctoral Candidate, Department of History, University of Toronto)

Topic:
From Earth to Home: Soil-Cement Bricks and the Self-help Housing Project in the 1950s Southwest Taiwan
化泥為屋：水泥土磚、自助建屋與鹽分地帶的美援住宅，1952–1956

Host:
Ya-wen Ku (Associate Research Fellow in the Institute of Taiwan History, Academia Sinica)

Discussant:
Yin-chen Chen (Project Assistant Professor, Department of History, Tung Hai University

Date and Time:
Friday, July 14th, 2023. 10:30-12:30(GMT+8)

Place:
Room 802 at ITH (also online via WebEx)

Language:
Chinese

Registration:
Click Here to Register

Abstract:
Concentrating on the soil-cement brick and its utilization in early Cold War era Taiwan, this article scrutinizes the materiality of U.S. aid housing projects in a Cold War frontier. In the 1950s Taiwan, wherein the exiled Republic of China (ROC) state was struggling to settle itself and defend against the potential invasion from the PRC, the housing problem was considered an issue not only about the living condition and economic development but also social stability and national security. As the Cold War confrontation arose, the general supply of decent housing became increasingly compelling for the ROC regime to prove its material and ideological superiority over the PRC. Regarding Taiwan as a critical ring of American anti-communist frontline in the West Pacific, the U.S. Mutual Security Mission to China (MSM-C) commenced a series of “aided self-help” housing projects in 1952 as a part of its economic aid and international development program.

Drawing on the soil-cement brick, a low-cost building technology, this article aims to survey the construction of housing modernity through a material perspective. Although plenty of scholarships already focus on the post-World War II housing modernization and how it reshaped tenants’ everyday lives, the scrutiny of the building material and its effects on housing projects remains an understudied topic by far. By emphasizing the alternative perspective of building material, this article aims to suggest that it is the materiality and availability of building materials that determine how much a housing design on paper and the values it represents can be realized; in other words, I argue that building materials and their uses in construction are indispensable for comprehending what makes a built space “modern.” I also suggest that the scrutiny of building materials provides a revealing insight into the interactions between multiple actors engaging in the construction, such as tenants, workers, technicians, designers, and governmental agents; focusing on these interactions, I attempted to demonstrate how “modern” housing was apprehended, sensed, and experienced by ordinary people in a rural community. Lastly, this article analyzes the soil-cement brick as a hybrid that interweaves human and non-human elements like soil containment, the climate, construction practices, economics, and Cold War geopolitics. By doing so, I seek to rethink housing modernity as a combination of multiple types of human-space relations rather than a consequence of architectural genius.

Attention:

1. For physical attendance, participants should register before July 10th. Please feel free to contact Ms. Lin if there is any question. E-mail: asithteh@gmail.com.
2. The lecture will be given in English. You can attend physically or watch the live-steam with Webex. The meeting room holds 50 participants. You can only watch the live-steam after the quota is full.
3. Participants can apply for a two-hours “Certificate for Environmental Education.” The certificate will be issued after the lecture in a form of a hard copy or PDF file.
4. The Certificate for Environmental Education is not a certificate of attendance. Please leave a note or contact us through email if you need it to meet the requirements of your university..
5. Add this event to your Google calendar: https://reurl.cc/7kk6Q5.