Wang Da-hong was a renowned twentieth century architect, designing some of Taiwan’s most famous landmarks. Wang may himself have passed on the 28th May 2018, having experienced over a century on earth, however his legacy lives on.
Wang was born in Beijing, Republic of China in 1917 and raised in Shanghai. However, at the age of thirteen, he began attending school in Switzerland and then in 1936, attended Cambridge University as a student of engineering before earning a masters in architecture from Havard. His years abroad would prove key to his future as an architect, providing the modernist influence in his work for which one day he would become known. Most notably, his teacher at Cambridge, Walter Gropius, had founded the Bauhaus school of architectural thought.
Wang returned to China in 1947, before moving to Taiwan in 1952 after the end of the Chinese Civil War. With a Chinese upbringing and a modernist education, Wang’s architectural designs were an innovative blend of his life’s influences. This would sometimes prove problematic during the early part of Taiwan’s martial law era - in 1961 his design’s for the National Palace Museum in Taipei were rejected by then-president Chiang Kai-shek for being too westernized.
Credit: Dr. Sun Yat Sen National Memorial Hall
However, the government’s next major architectural project would be Wang’s magnum opus. The Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in central Taipei first broke ground in 1968 before opening on May 16th 1972. Wang Da-hong had to compromise with the government on the design, which took over two years, with Wang himself labelling the process as his ‘most difficult project ever’. However, the result was a pioneering mix of traditional and modernist architecture, creating a government-venue which at the time was open and welcoming to visitors.
Wang, by the time of his death in 2018, had left an indelible mark on Taiwan’s architectural world - not just in thought, but also in the buildings that are now his legacy. Among them is the headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Education, numerous buildings on the National Taiwan University campus and his own private residence on Taipei’s Jianguo South Road.