Wanli UFO houses (萬里飛碟屋)
A short drive from Yehliu Geopark, Wanli UFO houses are the strangest architectural structures in Taiwan. A few years ago, there were two villages with similar-style houses: Sanzhi and Wanli. The former was demolished in 2010, but the Wanli UFO houses are still standing in the same place.
The area appears to be quite large, with a few hotels nearby that look quite run-down. The beach near the "UFO Village" is quite nice, although we did notice a lot of rubbish there. The place is very windy and cold, and it is mostly empty. Only five people were present when we visited to see this place.
Now almost entirely abandoned, the area was full of life 40 years ago. Walking around, we could see very few houses that are still in use. The place was intended to be a summer beach resort with many houses and hotels. Due to an economic crisis, the development was never finished, and now it remains as a kind of ghost town.
In Wanli, you can see two different types of houses: futuro and venturo. The futuro houses, designed by Finnish architect Matti Suuronen, are round, prefabricated houses. They stand 4 meters high and have a diameter of 8 meters. Futuro houses were designed to be transportable homes that could be situated in almost any environment.
Another type of house, also designed by Matti Suuronen, is the Venturo Houses. These houses are similarly made to the futuro houses but have a rectangular shape with more windows. They were also designed to be easy to transport and are modular, consisting of two parts. The houses also had specially designed furniture.
During the 1960s and 1970s, only a few hundred of these houses were built, and Taiwan has the most significant number of them. However, by the mid-1970s, both types of houses were taken off the market due to the increased cost of manufacturing plastic caused by the oil crisis in 1973.
Walking around the UFO village in Wanli, you can now only see a few houses that are still in use. Most of the houses are in very bad shape or almost destroyed. Inside, you can still see the old furniture and imagine life from years ago. The place has been abandoned for 40 years, and the ground remains untouched since then.
See also: Yehliu Geopark
Really cool place. I drove many times passed it, but noone except for me wanted to visit it, so we always drove without stopping.
ReplyDeleteFor me it's cool too, but maybe one day it will disappear like similar village in Sanzhi
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