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 complex is conceived as very large-scale (more than 50 thousand square meters) and is designed to combine many different functions - from entertainment and cultural proper to office, shopping, sports and service. However, in spite of the grandiosity of the plan, the plot allocated for construction is a very modest trapezoidal plot of land in terms of area, adjacent to the railway track. In order to somehow increase the area of the building spot, the competition task provided for the possibility of using the space above the railway, provided that the architects thought out a system of overlapping tracks that would be convenient for a given urban area. If necessary, during the development of the project, it was also allowed to use one more section next to the railway track - in the future, it may be given to the Pop Music Center - however, TPO "Reserve" made a fundamental decision to stay within the boundaries of the main TZ. All the more difficult was the task facing the architects - to come up with a very capacious and iconic volume, in which there is a place for all the numerous functions and which, outwardly, would be immediately recognized as a music and entertainment complex. But the team led by Vladimir Plotkin coped with it brilliantly.
The site is located perpendicular to the railway track, and no matter how you arrange the volume of the complex on it, it turns out that at least one of its façades will face the Pop Music Center close to the trains scurrying back and forth. Therefore, the question of whether to block the railway or not was not even raised before the architects - they understood from the very beginning that without this it would be impossible to create a full-fledged and independent urban planning structure. However, unlike most of the other participants in the competition, TPO “Reserve” blocked the railway tracks not with a wide bridge, as if “extending” the section to the other side of the transport artery, but with a long green ramp. This design not only disguises the railway at the distant approaches to the site, but also makes it possible to connect the platforms of existing stations in the area to the new complex. One of the buildings of the new complex rests directly on a green platform that is being created, from which two elegant ramps lead to it.
As already mentioned, one of the distinctive features of the projected complex was its versatility - the need to combine within the framework of one object spaces of various purposes as a result, and prompted the architects to the main compositional idea. The authors, first of all, divided the “working” and “non-working” functions. Premises intended for offices are arranged in one volume, concert halls, studios and cafes in another, and an open stage for several thousand people is quite logically placed between them. The buildings are designed as vertical plates flanking the dancing parterre, but the latter does not lie on the ground, as one might suppose, but is raised above it to a fairly decent height - in other words, this is not the roof of the stylobate, but a bridge thrown from one tower to another. Such a solution not only allowed the architects to give the impressive structure a certain visual lightness, but also not to turn the new volume into an insurmountable obstacle on the way of the inhabitants of the area.
The office block is turned towards the stage with a dull facade, which actually serves as its "backdrop", a giant screen where various images can be projected during performances. The shopping and entertainment space, or, as the architects themselves called it in their project, "Live House", on the contrary, is made as transparent as possible - it can be compared to a vertically oriented tribune, since from any floor of this building you can observe what is happening on the stage and in the open stalls. Specially equipped auditoriums are located in multi-colored consoles that adorn the glass façade. A shopping center and a parking lot are "hidden" under the stage, and a large pedestrian square ("plaza") with fountains, landscaping and "thematic" landscaping breaks up at ground level in front of the main entrance.
Outwardly, the complex resembles a giant square bracket, raised above the ground. This laconic geometry is a favorite technique of the architect Plotkin. Perhaps the closest analogue is his project of the sea terminal of St. Petersburg, only there the bracket was covered with another crossbar from above and turned into a rectangular frame symbolizing a window to Europe. Vladimir Plotkin, by the way, recalls that for Taipei he and his colleagues first designed just such a frame, "thickened" on the sides at the expense of offices and halls, but then decided not to repeat it, and introduced into the project a more frivolous and thus, no doubt, very the image of a bed, akin to popular music, whose "backs" are office and concert blocks, and on the "bed" new pop stars are born.
