132 MADE IN TAIWAN
Locally made, crafted by hand. Emma is an artist. Hsu is a designer. Together they live in a tech capital without internet and with a beach umbrella in the living room. «We wanted it to be a response to technology, a return to origins, an immersion in simplicity»
The line comes and goes. In JinShan, the district called “Golden Mountain” north of Taipei, 300 meters from the Pacific Ocean, the signal isn’t good at all. Amid the brilliant green vegetation and tropical humidity, unfold 600 square meters of a home: three floors, large panoramic windows, without wires, hyper-connections and design 4.0. «Rather rough materials and green plants, DIY furniture and neutral colours, all united by minimalist style. We wanted it to be a response to technology, a return to origins, an immersion in simplicity», explained Hsu over the phone. The Taiwanese designer, after twenty years in California between the School of Fine Arts and a so-so first marriage, has returned to Taipei and planted a beach umbrella in his living room. «We want to live with the idea of always being out in the open air, to live immersed in nature», smiling as he told the story of the sunshade’s unusual placement within the walls of his abode. Today he lives with his artistpainter wife Emma, a former student who he met during ceramics classes, in a house designed, inhabited and decorated for two and two alone. «During the renovation work we moved close by to monitor each corner of the house, step by step: from the details which, despite being small, make up its identity - a carpet recovered from a restaurant, Dalì’s eye which stands out in the large hall, a paper lamp - to the more important elements which give it structure, such as the foundation, the flooring and the walls». Today, the thirty-year-old old factory has become a large studio/community with concrete levelled on the floor and trowelled on the walls, numerous rooms for guests, small living rooms and larger halls, bedrooms, a small kitchen and a large garden which is cared for by the entire community. «There are many similarities between the construction of a house and the mechanisms of a love