"A poetic and nostalgic illustration that sensitively captures the living contrast between Taipei's intimate, historical alleys and its towering modern horizon."
-------- Review from Future Art & Design Award
Winners Gallery displays only representative images (thumbnail) of each entry.
Project description
Layers of Time
Taipei is a city that is always moving forward.
Beneath its modern skyline, however, countless narrow alleys still hold the traces of everyday life. Faded walls, old shop signs, weathered balconies, small family-owned stores, and the familiar sounds of morning vendors quietly tell stories of the generations who once lived there.
To me, these alleys are more than old streets. They are fragments of memory.
As a child, I never questioned the city around me. I simply walked through the familiar streets on my way home, passed the same small shops, and looked up to see Taipei 101 rising in the distance.
Only as I grew older did I begin to realize that the view had always been telling a story.
The alley stretches forward, while the city rises upward.
On one side are the streets that carry the memories of the past; on the other stands Taipei 101, representing the present and the future. They seem to belong to different eras, yet they exist beneath the same sky.
This is the idea behind “Layers of Time”.
“Layers” represent the different generations, memories, and traces of life accumulated within the city. “Time” represents the constant flow of change. The old streets have not simply disappeared beneath modern development. Instead, they remain as another layer of Taipei, quietly existing alongside its new architecture.
I want to portray not only the contrast between old and new, but also the connection between them.
One day, an old shop may close. A familiar wall may be rebuilt, and a quiet alley may look completely different. Yet the memories created there remain within us—the road we once walked, the places where we waited, and the lights we saw on our way home.
Taipei 101 continues to rise above the city, watching as everything below it changes.
Perhaps the beauty of Taipei is not simply that it has become modern, but that even while moving toward the future, it still carries the memory of where it came from.
The alleys hold Taipei’s yesterday.
The skyline represents its tomorrow.
And somewhere between them, we live in today.
Layers of Time is my letter to Taipei—a city that continues to change, yet never truly forgets its past.