MVRDV has completed construction of a new wholesale market for fruit and vegetables in Tainan. Already dubbed by Taiwan’s United Daily News as “the most beautiful fruit and vegetable market in Taiwan”, the open-air market not only serves as an important hub for Tainan’s food supply chain, but also as a destination for meeting, socialising, and taking in views of the surrounding landscape from the building’s accessible roof, thus promoting tourism in the region. In the future, the roof can be further developed, with the possibility to grow fruit and vegetables on top of the structure.
Design Team: Hui-Hsin Liao, Xiaoting Chen, Chi Yi Liao, Chiara Girolami, Enrico Pintabona, Maria Lopez, Gustavo van Staveren, Emma Rubeillon, Dong Min Lee, Jose Sanmartin, Cheng Cai, Yi Chien Liao
The countryside has increasingly been the topic of discussion in recent years. From urban planning and land use zoning, there is an ambiguity of mixed-use structure that often wanders on the edge of regulations. It has brought many chaotic, rough but self-contained miniature spatial patterns. In Zhutian, we try to explore how to regenerate the structures left by the agricultural relics through several projects. Dexing Rice Factory, built in 1942, is the grain bureau for the rural area of Pingtung in southern Taiwan. Once place for rice storage and for children to play and it has remained the Hakka house (Huo fáng) in everyone’s mind.
An ancient art form for civic participation, theater has evolved into the modern world as a vocation of the culturally refined, with its significance in daily life diminished. Theater space is valued for its potency for formal cultural productions, rather than its power to include and divert, and to be instantaneous. Contemporary performance theaters increasingly become standardized: a combination of two different-sized auditoria and a black box, with conservative internal operation principles for authentic work. Can a public theater still be inclusive, accommodating the classic and the serendipitous, the highbrow and the masses, the artistic and the social a place for the creative life of all?
Partners-in-Charge: Rem Koolhaas and David Gianotten
Client: Authority-in-Charge: Taipei City Government; Executive Departments: Department of Cultural Affairs, Department of Rapid Transit Systems (First District Project Office), Public Works Department (New Construction Office)
The original commercialized house type is not satisfying to the young couple’s eyes, not only the lifestyle cannot be implanted, but also the spatial atmosphere is far below expectations.
We hope to virtualize the interface of certain spaces, but of course, they can still become solid when needed; in the open mode, the walls of various spaces are interspersed with each other, either solid or virtual, just like the line paintings of the Tang Dynasty (Lu Xun, “Letters to Li Hua”)
House of light is a project located at the southern part of Taiwan. A house for client to enjoy the weekend and vacation with family when they get away from city. The natural beauty of this house is its adequate sunlight from three sides opened façade. The project is aiming to create an open, undivided living space to enjoy dinning, reading time with family around. The open living area is where the creation invented the most.
MVRDV has revealed Sun Rock, an operations facility containing offices, a maintenance workshop, storage spaces, and a public gallery for Taiwan’s government-owned power company Taipower. Anticipating Taiwan’s planned transition to green energy, the features of the Sun Rock building, from its shape to its façade, are focused upon generating solar energy as efficiently as possible. The building therefore acts as a definitive statement of intention, and a “manifesto in a building” to communicate Taipower’s goals to the public.
Located at the Changhua Coastal Industrial Park, near to Taichung, the building’s primary purpose is for the storage and maintenance of sustainable energy equipment. The site for Taipower’s new facility receives a significant amount of solar exposure throughout the year, and so the rounded shape of Sun Rock is designed to maximise how much of that sunlight can be harnessed for energy. On the southern side, the building slopes gently downwards, creating a large surface area that directly faces the sun during the middle of the day. At the northern end, the domed shape maximises the area of the building exposed to the sun in the mornings and evenings.
Article source: Chain10 Architecture & Interior Design Institute
As with all city dwellings, there is a lack of nature and harmony which has been remedied in this design. The building base is facing the west, so as to not be tested by the extremely hot weather in the south of Taiwan. Hot weather does not make for a comfortable living environment which is why its effect has been diminished. The design philosophy uses the basic teachings of modernism from the 1960s, and the large amount of greenery is akin to a forest in the city. The unobstructed view allows for an impressive view of the city while the projected shadows demonstrate the natural passage of time. The facade of the building utilizes a cantilever beam-column system with a sun-shaded aluminum plate for deeper light and a richness of space. We try to make the building look light and modern, and hope to reshape the traditional perception of Asian people, that luxury is more important than a feeling of wellness and contentment.
Next to the mouth of the Love River, the project is located in the port city of Kaohsiung, in southern Taiwan.
In this particular enclave where water is the central axis of Taiwanese life -both economically with the largest port in Taiwan, and at the urban level with the Love River drawing a dividing line between the two parts of the city, and at the environmental level where the relative humidity ranges between 60% and 80% – the Pop Music Center proposes a landscape of geometries rescued from the seabed. Foams, corals, seaweed, waves and aquatic animals are arranged on the surface and specialize in specific uses, so each piece manifests its own personality and a formal challenge and, at the same time, is integrated into a common ecosystem.
The Central Park is a new 67-hectare public park built on the abandoned site of a former airport northwest of the centre of Taichung, a city of 3 million people in central Taiwan. The park is at the heart of a new 256-hectare real estate development. It is a core of nature, planted with nearly 12,000 trees. Due to its topography, its valleys acting as retention basins, it also acts as a sponge for all the rainwater in the new district, preventing flooding and overloading the network.
On an ocean front mountain top between tall grasses and acacia forests, rugged curvaceous walls blur the boundaries between architecture and landscape to define public and private spaces to create an 8 room retreat.
The remote location is susceptible to gale-force winter winds, sea salt in the atmosphere, and had no access road prior to construction. Furthermore, the lack of skilled construction labor and the shoestring project budget drove the decision to use cast in place concrete early on at the concept phase for its climatic endurance, ease of transport and storage on site.
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