Landscape Of Traces / XRANGE Architects

Architects: XRANGE Architects
Area: 17000 m²
Year: 2020
Photographs: Studio Millspace
Design: 2014-2015
Construction Company: Jian Dou Construction Company
Lighting Designers: Unolai Lighting Design & Associates
Landscape Designers: Grace Cheung, Royce Hong, Emily Lin, Peihsuan Hsu, Sonia Pan, Joey Hsieh, Jason Chen, Norince Lee, Haochun Hung, Miriam Park, Soledad Moreno Velasco, Changchun Tsao, Yourue Wang
Collaborators: B.Y.Hsu Architect, ZC Architect & Associates
Client: National Taiwan Museum
Program Function: Landscape
Location: Taipei City, Taiwan

Landscape of Traces, a public landscape by XRANGE Architects in Taipei, has reinterpreted a historically complex site into a contemporary spatial archive that engages Taiwan’s industrial and colonial past. Part of the Railway Department Park within the National Taiwan Museum, the site adjacent to Taipei Main Station has undergone over 130 years of transformation—from the Qing Dynasty’s Machinery Bureau to the Japanese-era Taipei Artillery Factory and later, the Taipei Railway Factory. The project resists full reconstruction due to missing records and structural erasure, instead employing abstract surface language and low-fidelity markings to gesture toward former buildings and rail lines. These interventions form a legible field of imprints and overlaps that spatially convey the site’s fragmented memory. As a designated national historical monument and a major green space within the Taipei West District Gateway Project, Landscape of Traces enables public engagement with multiple histories without relying on nostalgic representation.

“Architecture is inseparable from the environment and its users in every sense of the word.”
Interview with Grace Cheung of XRANGE Architects

Landscape of Traces, designed by XRANGE Architects for the Railway Department Park in Taipei, transforms a historically layered site into a contemporary public landscape that engages Taiwan’s industrial and colonial past. Part of the National Taiwan Museum, the park sits adjacent to Taipei Main Station, a central transportation hub for the city and northern Taiwan. The site reflects 130 years of urban evolution, beginning with Taiwan’s first railway during the Qing Dynasty, originally serving the Machinery Bureau—a weapons manufacturer. By 1900, it had become the Taipei Artillery Factory and later the Taipei Railway Factory.

Now designated as a national historical monument, the grounds form a key green node within the Taipei West District Gateway Project, an urban renewal initiative that spans nearly one-third of downtown Taipei. Over time, the site has existed in multiple forms—many known only through rudimentary maps and sparse documentation. During the Japanese occupation, a dense cluster of utilitarian industrial buildings was introduced, often constructed hastily and aligned irregularly. Some were directly grafted onto existing Qing Dynasty structures, with new openings cut through 60 cm-thick rubble walls. Having served as a railway hub for more than a century, the site holds embedded traces of political shifts, wartime production, industrial activity, and urban growth. Its complex history continues to draw interest from historians, railway enthusiasts, and local residents.

The design approach, titled Landscape of Traces, interprets these layers as a network of spatial imprints intended to be publicly legible rather than archaeologically reconstructed. Complete reconstruction was neither possible nor meaningful—much of the original structure was removed during the excavation of train tunnels beneath the site, and no precise documentation survives to enable accurate rebuilding.

Instead, the landscape strategy employs blurred boundaries, gradient transitions, and low-fidelity surface markings to suggest where buildings and infrastructure once stood. Traces of former structures, building footprints, and rail alignments are embedded within the site, allowing their intersections and overlaps to narrate a century of transformation. The project avoids nostalgia, opting instead for an abstracted reading of memory through form and material.