Ruin Academy (Taipei, Taiwan 2010 -) is an independent cross-over architectural knowledge-building platform in the Urban Core -area of Taipei, Taiwan. The Academy is run in co-operation between the Finland based Casagrande Laboratory and Taiwanese JUT Foundation for Arts & Architecture.The Ruin Academy received the World Architecture Community Award 2011.The Academy is set to re-think the industrial city and the modern man in the box. It organizes workshops and courses for various Taiwanese and international universities including the National Taiwan University Department of Sociology, Tamkang University Department of Architecture, Aalto University Sustainable Global Technologies Centre and Helsinki University of Arts and Design Department of Environmental Art. The research and design tasks move freely in-between architecture, urban design, environmental art and other disciplines of art and science within the general framework of built human environment.The Ruin Academy occupies an abandoned 5-story apartment building in central Taipei. All the interior walls of the building and all the windows are removed in order to grow bamboo and vegetables inside the house. The professors and students are sleeping and working in mahogany made ad-hoc dormitories and have a public sauna in the 5th floor. All the building is penetrated with 6 inch holes in order to let "rain inside". The Academy is viewed as an example or fragment of the Third Generation City, the organic ruin of the industrial city.Without his ruins man is just a common ape.Ruin Academy publishes its own free newspaper the ANARCHIST GARDENER edited by Nikita Wu. The cross-disciplinary newspaper is architecture through writing, following professor Yoshio Kato's maxim IN THE FUTURE ARCHITECTURE WILL BE DONE BY WRITERS. Architect: Marco CasagrandeProject Manager: Nikita WuJUT Foundation Coordinators: Lea Yi-Chen Lin, Yi-Ling HungPhotos: AdDa, Nikita WuCello: Emily Chang 張立青Contact: info@ruinacademy.com