Architect dies after being part of a high-rise too close to sky

Deaths are inevitable but sad, and they are sadder when you don't know why it happened so you need to use a vague phrase like "being part" to describe a human's final moment. We don't know what "being part" means, and that's the point. We just don't.

Wu, a Taiwanese architect, was found dead on July 2, according to LTN News.

The end of Wu's life was clouded by the building project "Acquisition Plaza Zone B" (置地廣場B區, which seems to have a less literal official translation in English, but it just means buying land in Chinese), developed by Cathay Life Insurance, a subsidiary of Cathay Financial Holdings.

Acquisition Plaza Zone B, a 12-story, 19k-tsubo (or ping, a Japanese colonial metric for land size that still dominates in Taiwan and Japan, Taiwan's former colonizer. 19k tsubo converts to ~62.8k sqm or ~676k sqft) mall/office building, is part of the Taiwanese insurance industry's common practice of converting insurance money into real estate. It’s located near Taoyuan High Speed Rail Station and a metro station linking the area to central Taipei, and is close to Taiwan’s largest airport.

The land price of the area can be as high as NT$1.3m/tsubo, which is similar to Tokyo's average land price, according to HouseFun News and UDN News. Both sources were published in 2025.

The closeness to the airport contributed to the price of the land, and to Wu's tragedy.

According to CNA, the land where Acquisition Plaza Zone B is located allows buildings to be up to 42m (137.8 feet) due to airspace restrictions. But it's 59m tall, 17m more than the rule. The project applied for a construction license in 2020 and it was approved. It was set to be completed in late 2026, but the airport caught the height issue earlier this year. We do not know how this will be resolved without shaving the excessive 17m that's already built.

CNA mentioned that the Civil Aviation Administration sent the construction company a document about the height restriction under a regulation called "Regulations on the Prohibition or Restriction of the Heights of Buildings and Other Obstructions around an Air Terminal, Airfield and Navigation Aids."

The Civil Aviation Administration’s document did not calculate the 42m figure, but most news sources BobaChair found, including CNA, confirmed that the calculation came to 42m. On a separate note, the document mentioned that developers of buildings over 60m should consult the administration.

Again, the design turned out to be 59m. One meter less than 60m, if you don't find this sentence redundant. According to the city government that approved the construction license, the airspace restrictions were part of the process, but the process was stricter for buildings over 60m.

An architect/National Taiwan University lecturer claimed to have more than 800 signatures from architects on a petition arguing that architects should not carry "infinite responsibilities" and that there should be an insurance system covering architects’ professional errors. It argues that architects face laws on aviation rules, soil and water conservation, soil bearing capacity, and more, which are old, outdated, and buried in a regulatory maze.

The petition says: "Beneath the power structures of capital and politics, the prestige of creation masks a bitter reality of constant compromise ... Stone Age regulations ... The powerful, armed with biased contracts, routinely trample on the rights of professionals ... Fragmented, obsolete, and unpredictable regulations force architects onto a tightrope, where a single misstep means a bloody fall, or complete ruin."

We don't know if Cathay Life Insurance, Acquisition Plaza's owner, counts as "the powerful" that is "armed with biased contracts." We also don't know if the company will be happy to provide the insurance the petition wants for the architects.

The word “know” appears 10 times in this article, including the excerpt and the photo caption. One of the few things Cathay is delighted to let us know is that within three days of Wu’s death, Acquisition Plaza uploaded two Facebook posts. One was its Apple-product-giveaway promotion; the other was about a pop-up waffle shop. The petition was posted between these two posts.

CNA says Acquisition Plaza Zone B cost Cathay Financial Holdings "almost NT$10b."

Cathay Financial Holdings' total assets in 2025 were NT$14.341618t (about US$445b), according to its own website.

According to LTN News, Wu was allegedly asked to pay more than NT$100,000,000 in compensation. NT$100,000,000 is 0.007% of Cathay Financial Holdings' assets, or 122% of the estimated gross lifetime earnings of an American woman with a bachelor’s degree, according to the U.S. Social Security Administration, with the figure adjusted by BobaChair for inflation. We can't verify if the compensation demand was real. The source we cited did not even name who asked for the compensation.

How can we know?

Researched, handwritten, fact-checked, and finalized by a real human who was born and raised in Asia. Grammatically edited by ChatGPT 5.5 Medium.

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