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Welcome to MOFA Toastmasters Club! What is your first impression about the white building of Ministry of Foreign Affairs?
Did you notice the hand-chiseled 8 pillars of the entrance arcade?Fellow Toastmasters, good afternoon! Among all prominent Taiwanese architects, Mr. Wang Da-hong certainly comes on top of the list. He is the laureate of National Culture Award in 2014. He is the architect of MOFA office building.
At age of 97, Wang shares his secret about his keen eyesight. Every morning before he gets up from bed, he looks around four corners of his bedroom to massage his eyes. To see is to believe!Wang was born in Beijing in 1917, son of celebrated law expert Wang Chung-hui, the first Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China.
Wang was bought up by his grandmother in Suzhou. At age of 12, He went to high school in Switzerland where Spartan education was applied. After graduating from Architecture Department in Cambridge in 1939, Wang continued his studies at Harvard. He and Ieoh Ming Pei were students of first generation architect Walter Gropius (1883-1969） who taught them about modernism.
After World War II, Wang founded a firm in Shanghai in 1947 and moved to Taipei in 1952. Wang holds very specific aesthetic views. He applies strict spatial rules. He believes less is more. With Wang's Suzhou background, he introduced interesting Chinese elements to functionalist modern buildings in Taiwan.
Wang won the design competition of the National Dr. Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in 1965. The building represents the father of our nation and his spirit of revolution. The yellow roof is a hat, the front is tilt upward to see the bright future of our country.
Wang was invited to build MOFA office in 1969 with the theme of simplicity and modesty. Wang's aesthetic diplomacy is found in the symmetrical structure with two arms standing forward to reinforce the image of stability. The rectangular windows in odd numbers of 3 and 5 signifies the scrolls of Chinese paintings. The white walls of small mosaic tiles give MOFA a taste of dignity and solemnity.
Wang is an architect of literature. He wrote his English novel Phantasmagoria when he studied at Harvard University. He translated the novel of Oscar Wilde’s "The Picture of Dorian Gray" into Chinese, and changed the scene from high society in London to that in Taipei in the 50s.
After Wang settled in Taiwan in 50s, he never went back to UK, US, he didn't travel abroad. He leads his life on this land, Taiwan. Wang is not a showman, he is a quiet hero. A crowned reticent poet of architecture, Wang believes architecture bridges the gap of ideals and reality.
It feels blissful that we can enjoy MOFA Toastmasters Club meetings at such an exquisite and magnificent building designed by a great architect of the Republic of China, Mr. Wang Da-hong!
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