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While the towering Taipei 101 vies for the title of world’s greenest building, the EcoARK pavilion, incorporating 1.5 million recycled plastic bottles, foreshadows serious local competition. Taipei’s embrace of sustainable urbanisation is also exemplified in Marco Casagrande’s cocoon-like Cicada, an urban acupuncture project that reconnects residents with their home soil. Perhaps inspired by the excellent Muzha tea plantations surrounding the city, leisure farming is taking root ever closer to the centre: the owner of Songsham First Citizen’s Farm routinely rejects princely offers for his land so other city dwellers can experience the joys of trowel and secateurs. In this environment, contemporary art ventures sprout like soy beans, with official blessing – as with Huashan 1914 Creative Park, designated a cultural district after an underground theatre troupe staged unauthorised performances
in an abandoned distillery. As Taipei shifts its pace and priorities, other cities may want to follow suit.
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LISTEN Throughout the year 2000, John Eliot Gardiner toured churches in New York as well as 13 European countries, conducting all of Bach’s 198 surviving cantatas on their designated feast days.
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CINEMA Ugetsu (1953), a jidai-geki (period drama set before 1868) crossed with a romantic ghost story, may be the most convincing reason for Kenji Mizoguchi to be deemed the greatest of all Japanese filmmakers.
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ARCHITECTURE Sergio Rodrigues, the purported ‘father of Brazilian furniture’, was a painter’s son and a playwright’s nephew – major influences that helped shape his acute sensitivity.
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SLEEP Docked to a pier on the shores of Lake Rummelsburg, a small bay in the River Spree, the Modern Houseboat affords guests (up to four at a time) a truly unique perspective on Berlin.
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INTERVIEW In Norway, Karl Ove Knausgaard sold one volume of his 3,600-page My Struggle for every 20 inhabitants, prompting some businesses to ban discussion of the work on their premises on grounds of diminished productivity.
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SUPPORT The Laurence Sterne Trust is housed in Shandy Hall, the North Yorkshire abode under whose roof Sterne wrote The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman from 1759 to 1767.
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FLAVOUR When reconnoitring the Right Bank on foot, even frugal Paris explorers need sustenance: a great place to start the day is Telescope, which offers commendable food and drink.
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VISIT For an authentic taste of Seoul, it may be best to avoid the fashionable boutiques of Cheongdam-dong and immerse yourself in the bustling alleys of Gwangjang Market, in Jongno District.
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Image: by Kusakabe Kimbei [public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
‘Distinctions drawn by the mind are not necessarily equivalent to distinctions in reality.’ Thomas Aquinas
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