EcoArk

A cutting-edge engineering project has turned 1.5 million used plastic bottles into the world’s first large-scale recycled-plastic building.

From a distance, the building looks like a smart new addition to Taipei’s skyline—an angular, approximately nine-story-tall silver and white structure on Zhongshan North Road, not far from Taipei’s landmark Grand Hotel. Close up, it is a surprise for first-time visitors, as it is constructed with plastic bottles—1.5 million of them to be exact.

Since the building, known as the EcoArk, has taken shape, it has received much attention not only from local media, but international media including the BBC, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, and Bloomberg news services. National Geographic also has been filming it for the last half year for the TV channel’s MegaStructures program to air in early January.

The Taiwanese company that built it, Miniwiz Sustainable Energy Development Co. Ltd., a relatively young company started by a Taiwanese overseas returnee in his 30s, has also garnered a lot of attention. That is because the EcoArk is the world’s first fully functional, large-scale plastic building made from recycled plastic bottles. Taiwan is one of the biggest consumers of plastic bottles in the world, with the island’s 23 million residents using up to 4.6 billion polyethylene terephthalate or PET bottles each year. It took the company only a couple of weeks to gather enough used bottles to make the building, which it did by collecting them from department stores belonging to the Far Eastern Group, the project sponsor and one of Taiwan’s biggest conglomerates.

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Report from TAIPEI: BOYZ & GIRL

Boyz & Girl are an indie rock fourtet made of twenty-something teachers Jon Du, Guo Guo, Sonoko, and Ban Ban (who fronts the band with a captivating bowl haircut and cartoon demeanor). Their self-titled LP's haphazard production method (in a makeshift studio in Banqiao, assisted by a New York pal) matches its "stream-of-consciousness" mentality. Released locally by White Wabbit Records (who also distributes Broken Social Scene and Beach House), BOYZ & GIRL is noisy, unhurried and nostalgic.

Most songs were recorded live, and some make you feel like you’re in a Wong Kar-Wai movie. Others have that Sonic Youth swagger. Boyz & Girl recently toured China for the first time. Taiwanese artists tend not to suffer the stigma of their mainland counterparts —we aren’t compelled to search for political meaning in their creative expression. In fact, the spectrum of Taiwanese rock n roll runs from indie rockers to pop stars like A-Mei and this guy. Boyz & Girl’s homecoming album release party will be at Underworld on July 31st. Thank you Jon Du!

Report from TAIPEI: MARK LEE PING-BIN

Seasoned cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-Bin is finally gaining more recognition with a new book, Poet of Light and Shadow, and documentary, Let the Wind Carry Me. Linked often with director Hou Hsiao-Hsien (who calls him, affectionately, A-Bing) and overshadowed by fellow DP Christopher Doyle, Lee has steadily established himself as a technical master of "glamorous realism." He avoids HD whenever possible, and his shots are fluid and heart-breakingly gorgeous. See In the Mood for Love, Millennium Mambo, The Vertical Ray of the Sun (credited as Pin Bing Lee on imdb.com). The book reprints his fine art photography, poems and interviews.

On set, Hou likens his right-hand man to a soldier. Lee runs on self-deprivation: no bathroom breaks or family visits (his teenage son in Los Angeles struggles to understand his absenteeism). His mother, however, figures prominently in the documentary: in Taiwanese fashion, a true mama's boy! His favorite movie is Close Encounters of the Third Kind.