The Red House in Ximending District of Tiapei was built in 1908 as an emporium to provide a modern market for Japanese goods to the Japanese community and to the Taiwanese as part of the process of trying to assimilate them (Taiwan being a Japanese colony at the time)
The building was designed by Kondo Juro, a western-styled architect in the Taiwanese prefectural civil engineering office at the time, the market entrance, incorporating both octagonal and cruciform shapes, was paralleled by no other in the east and west. The market entrance also took on the ‘eight trigrams (bagua) design considered boldly creative then. Octagon Building, Cruciform Building, and the adjacent South-North Square are now collectively known as ‘The Red House.’
The interior of the central pavilion is very nice well restored and with excellent interpretive material and displays. The rest of the buildings are used as art space. Most were locked but we gatecrashed one and found a Taiwanese Heavy Metal Band.
They were great. This is what historical buildings should be recycled as!
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