Beyond Dark_明·暗

This project, “Beyond Dark”, has proposed an evidence-based speculated future for OMEP. It is neither a fantasy nor a utopia that only aims to satisfy my mind or stimulate the audience’s visual senses. My project has utilized the culture, history, events, and emotions associated with the historic building as a driver to speculate events beyond the life of OMEP and its periods of depression, planting a seed of hope. Interconnected concepts and ideas were examined and adapted to propose a promising future. This experimental process can be understood as a leap of faith, where doors were opened to welcome emerging thoughts and concepts and further tested by hand sketching. This process, I believe, is far more important than the final design itself. Since design organically evolves, based on facts, values and thoughts, the final design can only be concluded in a firm state of mind. However, this process creates a solid architecture that doesn’t change, and it also finds a truth that doesn’t change.
The title of this thesis, “Beyond Dark”, not only proposes a promising future or suggests a concept of hope, beyond the dark. More importantly, the design investigation suggests that one of the most important qualities of being human is the capability to see the extraordinary beyond the ordinary. The extraordinary does not result merely from vision, but also comes from one’s heart. Despite the difficulties, one should always focus on the image behind the vision, identify the architecture, and seek through the mist “Beyond Dark”. The investigation of local criminology interventions and dark tourism phenomena has provided a promising future for reusing the OMEP site as an important social and cultural project, playing a role in reducing recidivism rates and prejudice, establishing empathy and redirecting societal problems back to the community with a shared responsibility for social ills.