© Photo by Yucheng Chao
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https://www.archdaily.com/1020125/noke-shopping-mall-behet-bondzio-lin-architekten © Yucheng Chao Photography
Text description by the architects: Even as online shopping and the pandemic put the department store consumer experience in historic jeopardy, JUT Land Development CO., Ltd is building a shopping mall in the entertainment district of Dazhi, north of the Keelung River.
© Photo by Yucheng Chao
Akihisa Hirata’s “Taipei Complex” (2015) was an optimistic precursor to this project; it opened a sealed box and started a conversation emphasizing the symbiosis of humans and nature. Unfortunately, Hirata’s project did not come to fruition due to Taiwan’s climate and business factors. What I see in Hirata’s work is not an imitation of nature, but rather the spirit of Cedric Price and Joan Littlewood’s “Fun Palace” – the endless creation of a laid-back society.
© YuChen Chao Photography Elevation © YuChen Chao Photography
After the Great Depression, Britain faced an economic downturn, losing cheap labor, resources, and mandatory export targets due to the independence of its colonies. The Fun Palace aimed to provide a cultural public facility full of opportunity, optimism, surprise, and joy to a passive and discouraged society. It also served as a social university on the street, where people could share intangible fruits of culture, communication, and knowledge in this borderless theater setting. It was a public facility for intangible labor, representing a factory of culture and knowledge.
© YuChen Chao Photo Section
Also a collaboration with JUT Land Development Co., Ltd., Shintomicho Market is designed around the premise of a Fun Palace, a concept of an infinite cultural factory, with NOKE hoping to play a more active cultural role in Dazhong. Recognizing the lack of cultural facilities within the Dazhong area, JUT has allocated 30% of the department store’s exhibition space and included the literary function of Tsutaya Bookstore, dedicating over 50% of the space to public cultural and artistic use. The challenge is to design these public spaces that emphasize everyday interaction while maintaining its own commercial model.
© Photo by Yucheng Chao
We rethought the traditional department store by introducing a large staircase that breaks up the building massing and connects the top and bottom, eliminating the need for a windowed façade. It brings traffic flow directly from the elevated to the vertical plaza. This upward extension of the open space connects the cultural exhibits on the lower floors to the literary spaces on the third and fourth floors, and finally to the skating rink on the roof.
© Photo by Yucheng Chao
The back wall of this grand staircase becomes a vertical green framework, creating an upward-facing garden and also serving as a backdrop for vertical circulation within the building. The design of the ice rink uses foldable aluminum panels to lighten the roof structure and allows sunlight to enter from the north direction, similar to a typical sports facility. The building’s exterior follows a modular pattern based on a common unit of 90 centimeters, resembling musical notation, integrating all the building units and providing an orderly framework for commercial branding. The integration of architecture and external public space, the simple and orderly façade, and the emphasis on enhancing cultural and artistic education in the interior space all represent an attempt to reshape the traditional commercial architecture model. It provides an unlimited and free leisure social factory for Taipei University.
© Photo by Yucheng Chao
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