| Summary: | 碩士 === 東海大學 === 建築學系 === 92 === In a modern society, contradiction and conflicts exist between economy and culture: the former is an issue of pursuing the notion of technology, rationality and growth while the latter is an idea of achieving innovation, uniqueness, and critical thinking. In a spatial point of view, it is getting more challenging with regard to facing the relationships of cultural diversity and architecture as a product of consumption.
In a civil society, Café is not only a place for having a drink, but a “meeting place”— a place where people can enjoy chatting, talking business or even been transformed to a “second living room”. In other words, it is no longer a merely private space for family meeting in the past; it is a public and open space for middle class presently — a new model where social activity is associated with its spatial form in a tricky way — closely or loosely ?
Café is part of restaurant in City of Taichung, Taiwan when it was traced back to 70’s. With invent of cold tea technology in 80’s, the format, a combination of western spatial layout results in new relationships both spatially and culturally.In the early of 90’s, chain store type such as KOHIKAN café was brought in to Taiwan, his bright and clean spatial form of café concentrating on owner-customer relationship gradually changed the face of Café, In the late 90’s, the new café typology immerges in this area which provided customers not only the services of meals but also a pleasant environment — centered on the “scenario-based” which is obtained by fully utilized the spatial elements such as transparent open/green spaces. Furthermore, the meal services are not limited to coffee only, a combo of food service (tea/coffee/meal) is the focus, instead.
Spatial characters of Café were basically limited in a “container” though several architectural configurations such as double height spaces and sky lights were used to infuse the indoor and outdoor spaces. Additionally, this configuration tried to create an extension to the outdoor space- an invisible linkage of café itself and open space in urban scale. Ironically, this format was on the one hand successful in creating an “identity” for customer himself, on the other hand, the duplication of this model among competitors results in the lost of uniqueness at the same time. This phenomenon raise an issue: how can we find a model which can take care of identity and locality of this kind of place?
Café both fulfills the imagination of customers and owners — primary in terms of an “image” which is a sharing of “individual identity and utopian thinking”
The temporality and diversity of Café typology is a phenomenon reflecting the evolving modernity of civil society. It appears in a way of being created in a short time and possibly replaced by other cultural entity/product simultaneously — is it a destiny inherently or a new way of transformation?
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