Taipei is a metropolis, which today is home to about 3 million people and an incredibly actively developing architectural and construction market. In terms of the number of completed projects of architectural stars of the world, the capital of Taiwan can only be compared with Dubai. Over the past decade, the authorities of both cities have been implementing the most active urban planning policy: they organize international open competitions and erect futuristic objects, the construction of which no other metropolis would undertake.
The competition for the building of the Pop Music Center is the second world architecture competition for Taipei this year. And if in early 2009 a competition was held for the Taipei Performing Arts Center, which was predictably won by the Dutch bureau OMA, this time the winner was the little-known American bureau Studio Gang Architects. The second and third prizes also went to American architects - Reiser + Umemoto RUR Architecture PC and Office dA. Interestingly, the honorable mentions include such stars as Toyo Ito, Morphosis and JDS Architects. Despite the fact that the projects that received the first three places and honorable mentions have not yet been published either on the competition website or on the websites of the architects themselves, such a non-standard balance of power between star architects and little-known bureaus in itself makes one think about new trends in the world. competitive architecture. And all the more important is the participation of Russian architects in the competition - in order to win, it is no longer necessary to be a star (and Russians tend to have complexes about the current lack of global names in our country), but one must not be afraid to loudly declare oneself. A. Asadov's workshop presented a project called "Dragon's Nest" for the competition, based on the concept of the complex one of the most ancient cultural symbols of Taiwan.
A pop music center is supposed to be built in one of Taipei's industrial zones, which are subject to revitalization in the very near future. The plot allocated for the construction of the complex is a very modest trapezoidal plot of land in terms of area, adjacent to the railway track. The competition project provided for the possibility of building a space above the railway, provided that the architects thought out an adequate system for blocking the tracks. If necessary, during the development of the project, it was also allowed to use another section near the railway track - in the future, it may be given to the Pop Music Center.
The only thing that enlivens and brightens the dull industrial landscape is a green hill or fell, which Taipei residents call Nangang Mountain. It should be noted that the city is located in a valley and is surrounded on all sides by mountains, and such high forested hills as Nangang are ubiquitous in the metropolis itself. Some of them have been turned into parks with stone paths and flower beds, others are actually not used in any way. After analyzing the features of the site and the surrounding landscape, the architects of A. Asadov's studio came to an important conclusion, which formed the basis of the concept of the project - there should be no architecture in this place, there should be a park, a natural oasis in the middle of a gray urban desert. So the Pop Music Center was likened to another hill, which organically blended into the landscape of Taipei.
Above the railway, the architects build a platform that is completely landscaped. The volume of the main concert hall (in accordance with the competition program, it is designed for 4.5-5 thousand seats) resembles a small volcano in shape, the slopes of which are also greened, and a small open stage is located in the crater. The image of a volcano in the project also did not arise by chance: in the northern part of Taiwan, where Taipei is located, there is a whole group of extinct volcanoes. However, the artificial volcano created by A. Asadov's workshop turned out to be quite active - it spews out the sounds of music and fireworks, and the floor of the concert hall turns into a "stream of boiling lava" in the evening, over which there are special bridges for spectators at a fairly decent height.
The competition program also provided for the design of an open area for 15 thousand people as part of the complex. The architects placed it on a trapezoidal section adjacent to the road and closed it from the city with an unusually high backdrop. The need for such a shield is simply explained: it is planned to build several residential complexes on the territory located immediately behind the stage, and it is better to protect their residents from unnecessary noise in advance. In the plan, the site has a semicircular shape and is opened into a site, which in the future can also be given to the needs of the Pop Music Center. In this case, the architects designed another semicircle so that the halves could connect in perspective. The second semicircle is saturated mainly with commercial functions: there are recording studios, music stores, and promoters' offices. The open-air hall and the commercial center merge into a rather elongated ellipse, reminiscent of a volcano's crater, with two glacial lakes - skylights through which natural light enters the center. The same part of the park, which is located above the railway, faces the platforms with a cascade of terraces, between which the glass ribbons of the windows are masked. Inside this hill is the center of pop music fame, also announced in the competition program.
If you look at the master plan of the entire complex, its resemblance to the figure of a dragon strikes the eye. The park above the railway is the writhing body of a fire-breathing reptile, the concert hall is its head, the open stage with the backdrop raised is the wing, and the commercial center is its tail. As a decorative trick to reinforce the dragon associations, the architects also suggested scaling the paving in the park. And the element that gave the name to the whole project is hidden from the eyes of outsiders: the volume of the covered hall is an “egg” that has turned yellow and partially peeled off. Thus, the architects combined in their project the cultural and geographical symbols of Taiwan, two fire-breathing creatures, one of which is a product of mythology, and the other - of nature.
