Ruin Academy

Ruin Academy is a cross-over architectural research centre in Taipei. The work moves in-between architecture, landscape urbanism, sociology, environmental art and circus. There is a public sauna in the 5th floor.

The Academy occupies an abandoned 5-story apartment house in central Taipei. Bamboo grow through windows and it rains inside. Professors and students are working and sleeping in the dry corners and farming the rest of the building.

The architectural control is in a process of giving up in order to let nature to step in. So far it is not giving up – it is too lazy. Architectural control will be given up. Modernism is lost and the industrial machine will become organic. This happens in Taipei and this is what we study. Ruin Academy is an organic machine.
- Marco Casagrande

500 m2 in 5 floors, plan 20 x 5 meters.

Marco Casagrande, Architect
Nikita Wu, Project Manager
Lea Yi-Chen Lin, JUT Coordinator
Yi-Ling Hung, JUT Coordinator
Frank Chen, Project Assistant / C-LAB
Yu-Chen Chiu, Project Assistant / C-LAB

Casagrande Laboratory in co-operation with JUT Foundation for Arts & Architecture

Ruin Academy by Marco Casagrande in Taiwan won the WA Award Cycle 9. Please find below the WA Award poster for this project.