Kaohsiung Maritime Culture and Popular Music Center

Kaohsiung, Taiwan

**3rd Prize, KPop International Competition, 2011

The ideas our team developed in response build upon Kaohsiung’s distinct qualities and suggest ways to amplify visitation through urban design, landscape, and architecture. Instead of merely symbolizing culture, our building and site act together to generate culture: heightening visitors’ awareness and experience of Kaohsiung’s music, maritime history, and ecology.

As the site transitions from an industrial port to a cultural destination, the hard edges of the harbor are strategically broken down by a fine-grain system of pools and wetlands that link Kaohsiung’s human and wildlife residents to the water. People—rather than loading and storage equipment—are given priority access to the edge. The Love River Walk, which runs along the water and continues into the site, will be an active pathway enlivened by cafes and a market. A public park designed for music and recreation will become a destination for visitors, where tree-lined “performance rooms” house additional stages during music festivals. People can stroll along boardwalk paths that perch over the water or walk out onto piers that offer sights and sounds of the harbor. A strand of tropical grove vegetation serves as a shady conduit to the open waterfront, where a series of floating, sunken, and grounded edge ecologies form a watery public space unique to Kaohsiung.

Team:
Studio GANG Architects (U.S.A.)
J.J.Pan and Partners, Architects and Planners (Taiwan)
ARUP (HK, Dublin)