Beyond assisting with the renovation and preservation of old houses, the X-Basic Planning team is deeply concerned with the revitalization and development of urban spaces. With Taichung as their base, the team is particularly full of anticipation and enthusiasm for the next steps in Taichung’s urban vision. In March 2022, the X-Basic Planning team was invited by the Taichung Urban Development Bureau and landscape consultants to collaborate as a participatory design team in the “Heart of the Southern City” project. This initiative focused on the eastern and southern districts of Taichung, areas long overlooked due to complex traffic issues, to launch an “aesthetic awakening” community co-creation initiative before new construction began. During the process, they worked with nearby Guoguang Elementary School and Dongfeng Junior High School to organize workshops. The purpose was to enable designers and actual users to understand each other’s ideas and needs through dialogue and exploration of various media, jointly completing works suitable for the users.

To help balance the industrial economy, culture, and leisure in the eastern and southern districts, the “Heart of the Southern City” project will connect surrounding educational venues and green spaces. The scope encompasses the cultural corridor platform area near Xingda Road at Guoguang Elementary School, the ecological teaching area along Guoguang Road, and the Melaleuca Plaza at the intersection of Renhe Road and Qizhong Road at Dongfeng Junior High School.

Implementing community-based participatory co-creation during the construction phase of public landscape projects is not a simple task for any city’s redevelopment. This approach not only represents the gradual establishment of social engineering foundations behind the hardware infrastructure, but also focuses more attention on local users—leveraging the role of “people.” This is precisely the relationship between city and people that the X-Basic Planning team envisions, and they are fortunate to be part of it, contributing to the revitalization of Taichung’s eastern and southern districts.

During the workshop, the X-Basic Planning team invited plant artist Ms. Chen Xingfen (Flower Grandma) and Ashe and Mite from Liye Tea Pottery Studio to conduct “space observation” activities with teachers and students from Guoguang Elementary School. Together, they imagined potential feelings and issues in different scenarios, establishing preliminary spatial concepts. Next, they connected each student’s spatial observations using mind maps, creating “spatial scripts” that presented proposals integrating everyone’s ideas. Finally, they applied materials like styrofoam, pebbles, aluminum foil, bamboo skewers, and building blocks to create “spatial models,” translating their proposals into physical works and completing the journey from observation to presentation.

Students from Dongfeng Junior High School also participated in a plant impression ceramic board workshop, where they learned about the ecological landscape around their campus and selected different plant branches, leaves, and fruits to create unique ceramic boards. These ceramic boards will eventually be placed beside landscape stone benches, where they will serve as a feature of the campus that showcases achievements in aesthetic education while giving students a sense of participation in campus renewal. Beyond their role as students, Dongfeng Junior High School teachers also changed perspectives, imagining themselves as various campus characters such as ecology course teachers, students, and campus maintenance staff, to consider and observe the site from different viewpoints, developing ideas for space design and landscape furniture based on actual needs.

The students’ proposals contained many imaginative and creative ideas, while the teachers’ observations of the surrounding site were quite detailed and nuanced. The team assisted in documenting and compiling the results of each phase, comprehensively considering the building materials and design circulation patterns to be used in the actual construction. This ensures that the future campus spaces belonging to Guoguang Elementary School and Dongfeng Junior High School will bear testimony of collective participation, while also being truly appropriate for everyday use.