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Damp Skin is a collaborative project exploring the impact of East Asia's climate on post-modernized cities, focusing on memories, body perception, and everyday cultural phenomena affected by humidity and heat.


 
The Damp Skin Exhibition
MIT Wiesner Student Art Gallery
9.9.2024 – 9.29.2024
Cheng-Hsin Chan (SMArchS ‘24)
INA Wu (MArch ‘25)
Zhi Ray Wang (SMArchS ‘25)



Exhibition Introduction


The pervasive humidity and heat create unique urban environments in Taipei and Hong Kong, situated between latitudes 22 and 24 in the global east. With Taipei experiencing 220 rain days per year and Hong Kong's annual temperatures averaging 86°F with 95 percent humidity, water becomes an omnipresent entity, penetrating streets, walls, and bodies.

The Damp Skin exhibition explores this symbiotic relationship between the urban environment and its inhabitants, drawing parallels between the human body, which is 60 percent water, and the city, where rain is a constant companion. The skin acts as a vessel for water and heat, constantly exchanging and evaporating. The house is the skin of our body, and the street is the skin of the city. Persistent rain and humidity blur the boundaries between domestic and urban spaces, creating a sensation of overspill. The project challenges traditional demarcations between individuals and society, domestic and urban, and productive and reproductive labor, focusing on the necessity of multiple in-betweens leading to cities that feel like an "infinite domestic interior." 

This project is an invitation to engage with the reflection of the dampness and East Asia urban living. It is a call to rethink past practices, question current norms, and creatively explore the possibilities for a future that centers the human bodies and identities in architectural and social innovation.

Funded by the MIT Council for the Arts





The Book


Damp Skin: Portraits of Taiwanese Domesticity, Resilience, and Otherness
by Cheng-Hsin Chan




The book is currently undergoing a redesign, with publication anticipated in 2025.

For further interest, please fill out this form:
https://forms.gle/yQKcJiG8yxGGtLQB9



WORK IN P





MIT SA+P

MIT Thesis
Advisor: Rosalyne Shieh

Reader: Jaffer Kolb, Roi Salgueiro Barrio

© 2025 Cheng-Hsin Chan. All Rights Reserved.