Interior Taipei Ximen Red House Editorial Photo

The Red House, a Western-style red-brick octagonal structure in Taipei's Ximen space built in 1908, is Taiwan's first public market and the most well preserved class III historical site. Designed by Kondo Juro, a western-styled architect in the prefectural civil engineering office at the time, the market entrance, incorporating both octagonal and cruciform shapes, was paralleled by no other in the east and west. The market entrance also took on the ‘eight trigrams (bagua) design considered boldly creative then. Octagon Building, Cruciform Building, and the adjacent South-North Square are now collectively known as ‘The Red House. ’rn