Text description from the architects. Although the consumption experience of department stores is facing a historic existential crisis due to the impact of online shopping and the pandemic, JUT Land Development CO., Ltd. is building a shopping mall in the designated Dazhi entertainment district north of the Keelung River.
Akihisa Hirata’s Taipei Complex (2015) was the optimistic precursor to this project. It opened a sealed box that initiated the discussion of emphasizing the symbiosis between humans and nature. Unfortunately, Hirata’s project was not carried out due to Taiwan’s climate and economic factors. What I see in Hirata’s work is not the simulation of nature, but rather the spirit of Cedric Price and Joan Littlewood’s Fun Palace – a limitless creation of a leisurely society.
After the Great Depression, Britain experienced an economic downturn due to the loss of cheap labor, resources, and mandatory export destinations due to the independence of all colonies. Fun Palace sought to create a cultural public institution full of possibilities, optimism, surprises, and joy in a passive and discouraged society. It also served as a social university on the street where the public could share intangible products such as culture, communication, and knowledge in this limitless theater setting. This represents a public institution for intangible labor and a factory for culture and knowledge.
Shin-Fu Town Market, also a collaboration with JUT Land Development CO., Ltd, was designed under the premise of Fun Palace, the concept of borderless culture factory, and we aspire to have NOKE play a more active cultural role in Dazhi. Given the lack of cultural facilities in Dazhi County, JUT has reserved 30% of the exhibition space in the department store, and by incorporating the literary functions of Tsutaya Bookstore, over 50% of the space is dedicated to public culture and artistic use. The challenge is to design these public spaces to emphasize everyday interactions while maintaining a unique business model.
We reimagined a traditional department store without a window facade by incorporating a grand staircase that divides the mass and connects upper and lower areas. This directs the flow of visitors from the overpass directly to a vertical plaza. The upward continuation of this open space connects the cultural exhibition on the lower levels with the literature room on the third and fourth floors and finally with the ice skating rink on the roof.
The back wall of this grand staircase forms a frame for vertical greenery, creating an upward garden, and also serves as a background for vertical circulation in the building. The design of the ice rink uses folded aluminum panels to lighten the roof structure, which allows sunlight to enter from the northern direction, similar to a typical sports facility. The exterior of the building follows a modular pattern based on the common denomination of 90 centimeters, resembling a musical score that integrates all building units and provides an orderly framework for commercial branding. The integration of the architecture with public outdoor spaces, the simplicity and orderly facade, and the focus on promoting cultural and artistic education in the interior all represent attempts to redesign the conventional commercial architectural model. Dazhi, Taipei, becomes a borderless and free social leisure factory.
