The Sustainable Taiwan Initiative is currently offering two courses at the National Taipei University of Technology during the Spring of 2005. Students and faculty from both UTSoA and NTUT will engage in both a civic and professional discourse within Taiwan’s political, economic and social/political context. These two courses will promote a collaborative interdisciplinary approach, which we assume to be necessary for any long-term solutions, and, in our opinion, is also one of the opportunities created within sustainable discourse.

Both the studio and the seminar were constructed so that students could possibly collaborate and benefit in the work of the other, and, to this end,the each curriculum affords opportunities for this kind of exchange. A Forum, which is the principal work of the seminar, is particularly seen as an opportunity for both courses to engage the larger professional and civic community with ideas, issues, and design proposals, which emerge from the each course’s work. Increasingly, modern environmentalism is defined by its political and social dimension. As such, an emphasis will be put on promoting and establishing methods of exchange with the larger civic community. This will be done through the forums but also through the design proposals and built work of the studio, and publications of both courses’ outcome.

Greenspace within the city of Taipei.