Anticipating a Second Stage: The New Taipei City Museum of Art Design Competition
by Stanley Collyer
Finalist entry by Kengo Kuma and Associates
To arrive at a design for a new art museum in Taipei, the organizers decided to allow the participants more flexibility than usual in devising their planning concepts for the new institution. According to the design brief, “the planning and design guidelines in this program are for reference only. The designer must propose…new possibilities for modern art museums, define the exhibition method, and propose new space requirement, then proceed (in) the planning and design based on the new required spaces and design guidelines.”
The Jury Process
It is not unusual to find different personnel involved in different stages of the selection process. Normally this change of faces occurs after an RfQ screening committee process, whereby a limited number of finalists are shortlisted for a single-stage presentation of proposals. In this case, the competition was open to international participants, with a first-stage jury made up of local design professionals. In the second stage—to be decided in October—we will see three outside jurors, Peter Cook (UK), Norihiko Dan (Japan), and Julien de Smedt (Denmark) joining four local professionalson that jury, the latter being in the majority. Will their enthusiasm for the selected finalists rise to the level of that exhibited by the first stage jurors?
As for the finalists, all three had quite different approaches, albeit leaning heavily on former precedents. The choices varied from linear and vertical to historicism as design mechanism. The finalists were:
Federico Soriano Pelaez, Spain
Peter Boronski / Jean-Loup Baldacci, New Zealand/France
Kengo Kuma / Kengo Kuma & Associates, Japan
Five honorable mentions were:
James Law Cybertecture International Holding Limit (Hong Kong) Sung Goo Yang with Oscar Kang (USA)
Ian Yan-Wen Shao with JR-Gang Chi, Ar-Ch Studio (R.O.C.)
Composed of a layered, undulating configuration tied together by the topography, one wonders if the jury had the firm, Foreign Office, or even Zaha Hadid in mind when it selected this design for the final round. Despite such superficial comparisons, this entry suggests a strong connection to a park-like setting, a place to be visited on weekends and holidays with the entire family. A landlocked version of the Oslo Opera House?
Federico Soriano Pelaez
This is a very theoretical scheme, based in part on bits and pieces of past museum plans. How these isolated parts can all fit together in a cohesive whole is something the upcoming jury will undoubtedly wrestle with. This proposal raises many questions, not the least of which will be circulation. Another may be its low profile, with a significant part of it being located underground. This entry is notable in that its presentation is completely in black and white—not one color rendering. How often do you see that in this computer age?
Kengo Kuma / Kengo Kuma & Associates
Here the similarity to Frank Gehry can hardly be avoided, apart from the material nature of the facade wrapping around a normal structure. As icon, this entry represents a truly strong urban statement. Sustainability is high on the list of priorities here; but lurking in the background will always be the question of budget viability, that is, does the City have unlimited resources to realize this project?
At this writing, we did not have access to the honorable mentions; but numerous non-winners have already begun to pop up on the internet as the results of this first round have become public.
In an ambitious plan to facilitate hi-tech research and development, the MK:U competition was launched in January 2019 to seek a masterplan for a new university. The site of the new university at MK is located at the heart of the Oxford to Cambridge innovation arc and just 30 minutes from London by train. MK, now known as a Smart City, has excellent connectivity; its proximity to the M1 motorway and rail network means twenty million people can reach it within 60 minutes.
Form and Dichroic Light Scott Hall at Carnegie Mellon University Michelle LaFoe and Isaac Campbell OFFICE 52 Architecture Forward by Cesar Pelli, FAIA Introduction by Michael J. Crosbie, FAIA Leete”s Island Books, Maine USA Hard cover; 96 pages in color ISBN 9780918172709
In his introduction to Form and Dichroic LIght, Michael Crosbie never mentions the term, “wild card,” to describe Office 52’s participation in the invited competition for the Carnegie Mellon Engineering Building. The four finalists, picked from a list of 17 firms, also included three household names: ZGF, Wilson, and BCJ (Bohlin Cywinski, Jackson). So what possible chance could a firm, which had just recently opened a small office in Portland, Oregon, have against a competition lineup of this magnitude? But as OFFICE 52 Principal, Isaac Campbell explained, as a small firm, “we were quite nimble,” and the $50,000 stipend the firms all received to produce a design could allow OFFICE 52 more time to undertake the research involved than might be the case with a larger office, where a cost controller is constantly focusing on the operation.
The Rails to Trails program, which gained momentum after the1984 Federal Land Banking Law—supported by the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy—has seen over 24,000 miles of trails established where rail lines once existed. Some sites were strictly urban, while others, sometimes over 100 miles in length, were primarily rural, while others combined some of both.
The reunification of Germany in 1989 not only had a great impact on the lives of many Germans, especially those living in the former DDR,but together with the decision to move the nation’s capital from Bonn to Berlin resulted in two major international design competitions in 1992: the first was to convert the existing Reichstag building into a home for the German parliament, the second being the Spreebogen planning competition, which included a chancellery for the head of state as well as needed buildings nearby for the Federal government.
The renovation of Miremont-le-Cret n 2012 was unusual in that the project was the subject of a competition. This building had long been landmarked as one of Geneva’s most significant modern accomplishments, designed in 1953 by a local architect, Marc-Joseph Saugey. The building’s design is remarkable in how it fits into a somewhat narrow, elongated site, but solving the issue of monotony that could naturally arise, had the facades not consisted of a simple elevation with no protruding edges. Instead Saugey came up with the idea of a faceted treatment of the facade on both sides of the structure, thus eliminating any notion of boredom on the part of a casual visitor.
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