Wang Chiu-Hwa

Wang Chiu-Hwa died of heart failure at Taipei City Renai Hospital at around 2 p.m. on 14 June 2021, less than two months before her 96th birthday.

In 2015, Wang Chiu-Hwa donated a large part of her archive to the M+ Collection Archives in Hong Kong.

Between 1983 and 1985, she designed the main library of Chung Yuan Christian University, which exemplifies her sense of spatial planning. It has a holding capacity of 700,000 volumes, a conference room with room for 150 people, and a study room with room for 800 people. Its multiple-entry plazas and sunken gardens were designed to encourage socialising. A special feature of the library is the attention given to energy conservation. Natural lighting and ventilation were made possible through the use of double-height spaces, also providing visual fluidity and transparency. This was her first major project after returning to Taiwan, and it won her the Taiwan Provincial Building Design Award and the National Building Design Award for Passive Energy Efficiency.

Wang Chiu-Hwa returned to Taiwan in 1979. She began teaching at the Taipei Institute of Technology and Tamkang University, and served as architectural consultant to a number of public institutions. In 1983, after collaborating with architect Joshua J. Pan on the Chung Yuan Christian University library, she started her own practice and has since been working in joint venture with J. J. Pan and Partners, Architects and Planners, on a number of projects. Wang was named Outstanding Architect of Taiwan ROC in 2003. She won the 2020 National Award for the Arts [zh] in architecture, and was the first woman recipient of the prize since an award for architecture was established in 1997.

From 1953 to 1979, Wang worked with American architect Percival Goodman in New York City. She began working for him part-time as designer while still his student, and then worked for him full-time for almost thirty years, starting as an associate in 1960 and then becoming a partner. Wang's first project with Goodman was designing the Fairmount Temple in Beachwood Village, Ohio (1953). Goodman exerted great influence on her architectural ideas; like Goodman, she strongly believed in the notion of the architect as having a social responsibility through their work. She is quoted as saying “as a designer, you must concern yourself first and foremost with the well-being of the majority, not just the interests of a few wealthy people.”

Wang Chiu-Hwa (Chinese: 王秋華; 8 August 1925 – 14 June 2021) was a Taiwanese architect noted for her work with libraries in Taiwan. Due to the many libraries she designed and the fact she pioneered the earliest modern university library in Taiwan, Wang was given the unofficial title of "Taiwan’s 'Mother of Libraries'".

Wang was born in Beiping on 8 August 1925. Her father was Wang Shijie, a scholar and politician who moved to Taiwan during the Chinese Civil War, her mother, Xiao Dehua, was a painter, and the musician Xiao Youmei was her maternal uncle. After earning her bachelor's degree in architecture at the National Central University in Chongqing, China, which was China’s first university programme for architecture. Wang Chiu-Hwa moved to Seattle to continue her studies at the University of Washington in 1946. She then studied at Columbia University in New York City and obtained her Master's degree in architecture in 1949. She was one of the first Asian women to study architecture at University of Washington and the Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Wang earned her architecture licence in 1960.