Ximending Neon and Subcultures

The Animate store in Taipei occupies the second floor of a building in the Xinyi District, marked by a bright, oversized sign featuring colorful anime characters. This shop serves as the primary retail hub for the Japanese chain in Taiwan.…

The Red House in Ximen features a distinctive octagonal main building constructed from red brick, surrounded by a cruciform market hall. Architect Kondo Juro designed it in nineteen oh eight as a public market for the Japanese colonial…

The Shinjuku Plaza building features a distinctive, multi-tiered facade covered in bright, reflective panels that catch the neon lights of Ximen. It opened in the late nineties as a hub for youth fashion, modeled after the bustling…

The Wan Nian Building stands out with its boxy, white-tiled exterior and the glowing red neon sign near the top that has advertised a famous ice cream parlor for decades. Once a luxury cinema and commercial hub in the nineteen seventies,…

The two-story red brick buildings on Tattoo Street hold a collection of narrow storefronts where, instead of typical neighborhood businesses, ink artists work behind glass walls. In the nineteen eighties, this alleyway became a hub for…

America Street in Taipei is a narrow, bustling corridor defined by its dense arrangement of low-rise brick buildings and a constant, humming mix of local vendors. It exists as a surviving pocket of old Wanhua, a district that grew rapidly…

The red brick walls of the Taipei Cinema Park reach toward the sky with jagged, spray-painted graffiti murals covering almost every surface. This space was once the Taiwan Gas Company plant, built in nineteen thirty-four to provide fuel…