Taipei Pop Music Center International Competition
Honorable Mention 1:
Morphosis Architects / Thom Mayne / Nationality: U.S.A
Joint Tenderer: J.J. Pan and Partners, Architects & Planners / Chungwei Su / Nationality: R.O.C.
Design Concepts:
VISION STATEMENT
Popular music absorbs and transmits ideas through everyday life, influencing lifestyles, fashion, attitudes and language. Its specificity is highly unique in relation to other musical forms; pop music is commercial, ephemeral and accessible, relying on technological innovations and broad public appeal. The Taipei Pop Music Center presents an extraordinary opportunity for architecture - as a means through which ideas of popular music are disseminated. Its potential is endless for the City of Taipei – as a vibrant, global center for musical creativity. For the urban fabric of Nangang, the project presents infinite possibilities for transforming its industrial past into a vibrant round-the-clock cultural district.
The Taipei Pop Music Center is expansive in its global impact, yet grounded in its local context and musical form. It assumes the transient quality of popular music; accommodating rapid changes in trends and technology, engaging day to day sensibilities rather than reflecting an iconic image. When the British youth culture invaded the American rock & roll industry, first in the 1960s with Beatlemania, and second in the 1980s with music videos, the collision transformed American music and established the British record industry as a vital center for musical creativity. Our design for the Taipei Pop Music Center aims to inspire this calibre of phenomenon by creating an exciting venue for interaction and collaboration - an environment that facilitates the continuum of cultural regeneration, which is vital to Taiwanese pop culture and essential to its musical form.
In the spirit of Taiwan’s vibrant popular culture and Nangang District’s emergence as a center for commerce and creativity, our design for the Taipei Pop Music Center embodies three primary principles and objectives: First, the building’s position above the streetscape enriches rather than interrupts the urban life of Taipei. Second, rather than distributing program across the site, the scheme deliberately densifies programmatic functions by creating a compact building environment that generates social and cultural activity through programmatic connections. Third, the flexibility and accessibility of the Taipei Pop Music Center epitomizes the broad public appeal of the popular music and entertainment industries. These three objectives are interrelated and realized in a design that achieves a complete integration of architecture, urban design, program and context all woven into a seamless venue that captures the power of live performance.
URBAN INTENSIFICATION
Hovering above the streetscape while connecting directly to it, the Taipei Pop Music Center magnifies the urban experience. Absorbing the City’s popular culture, the Taipei Pop Music Center intensifies activity and expresses the phenomenal energy of the live performance.
Launching the biggest (and quite possibly the highest grossing) tour of all time, and with it, the largest stage in rock & roll history, U2, the Irish based international pop icons, recently set out to achieve “intimacy on a grand scale.” What is new in contemporary culture, as evidenced by U2’s agenda with their current tour, is the relationship between the performer and the audience, the interaction and accessibility which is inherent in pop music and that the venue affords. From the performers’ perspective the design elements of the stage all but disappear and the audience becomes part of the show. The Taipei Pop Music Center negotiates this experience with a network of public and performance spaces - formal and informal, expected and unexpected – facilitating impromptu concerts and world class performances.
↗ Thom Mayne / Morphosis Architects - Taipei POP Music Center 01
↗ Thom Mayne / Morphosis Architects - Taipei POP Music Center 02
↗ Thom Mayne / Morphosis Architects - Taipei POP Music Center 03
↗ Thom Mayne / Morphosis Architects - Taipei POP Music Center 04
↗ Thom Mayne / Morphosis Architects - Taipei POP Music Center 05
↗ Thom Mayne / Morphosis Architects - Taipei POP Music Center 06
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↗ Thom Mayne / Morphosis Architects - Taipei POP Music Center 08
