Text description provided by the architects. Even though under the circumstances, which consumption experiences of department stores face a historic existential crisis due to the impact of online shopping and the pandemic, JUT Land Development CO., Ltd constructs a shopping mall in the designated district for entertainment located north of the Keelung River, Dazhi.
Akihisa Hirata’s Taipei Complex (2015) was the optimistic precursor of this project. It opened a sealed box, which introduced the conversation of emphasizing the symbiosis between men and nature. Unfortunately, Hirata’s project was not carried out due to Taiwan’s climate and business factors. What I see in Hirata’s work isn’t the simulation of nature but rather the spirit of Cedric Price and Joan Littlewood’s Fun Palace — a boundless creation of a leisurely society.
After the Great Depression, Britain faced an economic downturn following the loss of cheap labor, resources, and mandatory export targets due to the independence of all its colonies. Fun Palace aimed to provide a cultural public facility filled with opportunities, optimism, surprises, and joy in a passive and disheartened society. It also served as a social university on the streets, where the public could share intangible products such as culture, communication, and knowledge in this borderless theatrical setting. This represents a public facility for immaterial labor and a factory for culture and knowledge.
The Shin-Fu Town Market, also a collaboration with JUT Land Development CO., Ltd, was designed under the premise of Fun Palace, the concept of the boundless cultural factory, and we aspire for NOKE to take on a more proactive cultural role in Dazhi. Recognizing the lack of cultural facilities within the Dazhi circle, JUT has allocated 30% of exhibition space in the department store, and the inclusion of Tsutaya Bookstore’s literary functions results in over 50% of the space being dedicated to the public culture and artistic use. The challenge lies in designing these public spaces to emphasize everyday interactions while maintaining a unique commercial model.
We reimagined a traditional department store without the need for a windowed façade by introducing a large staircase that splits the mass and connects upper and lower sections. Bringing in the flow of people from the overpass directly to a vertical plaza. The upward continuation of this open space connects the cultural exhibition on lower levels to the literary space on the third and fourth floor, and lastly to the ice rink on the rooftop.
The back wall of this grand staircase is a framework for vertical greenery, creating an upward garden, and also serves as the backdrop for vertical circulation in the building. The design of the ice rink uses folded aluminum panels to lighten the roof structure, which introduces sunlight from the north direction, similar to a typical sports facility. The exterior elevation of the building follows a modular pattern based on the common denomination of 90 centimeters, resembling a musical score, which integrates all building units and provides an orderly framework for commercial branding. The integration of the architecture with external public spaces, the simplicity and orderly façade, and the focus on enhancing cultural and artistic education in the interior space all represent the attempts to reshape the conventional commercial architectural model. Providing Dazhi, Taipei, a boundless and free leisure social factory.
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