Amorphous chairs, outrageously colored lamps and many other contemporary designs have gradually moved into "hip" households in Taiwan. As Germany and Scandinavian countries are still most often associated with contemporary design in people's minds here, the current exhibition at Taipei Fine Arts Museum (
Domains -- Contemporary Israeli Design (領域: 當代以色列設計展) is a traveling exhibition aimed at audience in East Asia and the Pacific region. To present a rounded sampling of contemporary Israeli design, well-known designers are exhibiting, such as Yaacov Kaufman -- who works for Lumina Italia -- as well as rising talents such as Ron Gilad, whose bullet-shot vase caught much attention at the opening of the show. Most of the 10 designers have gained increasing international recognition for their innovative works with a unique identity.
PHOTO COURTESY OF TFAM
Nirith Nelson, curator of Domains, explains at the opening of the exhibition that the short history of the state of Israel encourages designers to try out innovative concepts while the diversity of ethnic groups contributes to the variety of design approaches. The unstable political situation and limited economy in Israel, Nelson said, has turned designers' attention to improvisation and quick-fixes instead of time-consuming complex devices.
These improvisations are usually very amusing and original. Some of them have a pristine kind of beauty.
Yaacov Kaufman had in mind humanity's first chair when he designed Potchim. This one-off piece uses a complete block of tree trunk, part of which is still covered with bark. By making only two cuts and fixing a pair of hinges on the trunk, it becomes a folding chair. A similar trunk is cut only once, in a long "s" curve, to become a pair of chairs which easily blend in with a forest.
A recent graduate from Israel's well-known Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Sharon Peter Shechter incorporates the element of time in his furniture design in a humourous way. In Lamp Table, a table with book ends, Shechter cuts the veneer of formica from the wood table surface and bends the protruding formica to form the stem of a lamp and book ends. In Israeli households, there are countless tables which share this peeling-veneer appearance, only there it was caused by wear.
Probably the most beautiful work in the exhibition is Ami Drach and Dov Ganchrow's Ga-mish, which looks nothing like a household object. The framed flexible plywood strips forms a vertical fretwork.
Placed against a wall, it can be a shelf of flexible compartments. Standing alone, it can be a room partition, or a floor window suitable for a Mediterranean climate. Whatever it is, the structure is a pleasure to look at. Pleasure, according to the curator Nelson, is one of the main triggers of Israel design today.
Domains -- Contemporary Israeli Design will run through Feb. 15 at Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 181, Zhongshan N Rd, Sec 3, Taipei. (
The tropic of cancer bisects the city of Chiayi (嘉義). The morning heat is, predictably, intense. But the sky is blue and hued with promise. Travelers brave the heat to pose for photos outside the carriages lined up at the end of platform one. The pervasive excitement is understandable. HISTORIC RAILWAY The Alishan Forest Railway (阿里山森林鐵路) was engineered by the Japanese to carry timber from the interior to the coast. Construction began in 1906. In 1912, it opened to traffic, although the line has been lengthened several times since. As early as the 1930s, the line had developed a secondary function as
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) National Congress tomorrow will potentially be one of the most consequential in the party’s history. Since the founding of the DPP until the late 2000s or early 2010s, the party was riven with factional infighting, at times getting very ugly and very public. For readers curious to know more about the context of the factions and who they are, two previous columns explore them in depth: “The powerful political force that vanished from the English press,” April 23, 2024 and “Introducing the powerful DPP factions,” April 27, 2024. In 2008, a relatively unknown mid-level former
In Taiwan there are two economies: the shiny high tech export economy epitomized by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and its outsized effect on global supply chains, and the domestic economy, driven by construction and powered by flows of gravel, sand and government contracts. The latter supports the former: we can have an economy without TSMC, but we can’t have one without construction. The labor shortage has heavily impacted public construction in Taiwan. For example, the first phase of the MRT Wanda Line in Taipei, originally slated for next year, has been pushed back to 2027. The government
July 22 to July 28 The Love River’s (愛河) four-decade run as the host of Kaohsiung’s annual dragon boat races came to an abrupt end in 1971 — the once pristine waterway had become too polluted. The 1970 event was infamous for the putrid stench permeating the air, exacerbated by contestants splashing water and sludge onto the shore and even the onlookers. The relocation of the festivities officially marked the “death” of the river, whose condition had rapidly deteriorated during the previous decade. The myriad factories upstream were only partly to blame; as Kaohsiung’s population boomed in the 1960s, all household