encounter with the neighborhood
The new entrance design fits in the surroundings, and provide an unexpected pathway into the other side of the neighborhood. Walking along the streets, the old brick wall of Taipei MoCA can be seen through narrow openings of the buildings, but people hardly take notice and look into the other direction. The new entrance creates a chance for a peek into the old and artistic brick wall. The space is created with angled high walls of bricks and trees, which allowed interesting visual connection and disconnection to occur. Just as the entrance and MoCA would become an unexpected encounter of life in the neighborhood, so does the space between the walls become an opportunity to create such encounter moments for the visitors of MoCA.
Space between Walls
The most impressive feature of the original MoCA building was the old red brick wall in the city context. The new entrance design serving the goal of attracting potential visitors from the subway station on the other side of the streets carries the task of recreating the existing scene of MoCA in the neighborhood. Thus, wall, as the essential item was abstracted from the study and are used as the dominant designing tool in this entrance design. The whole exhibition area is constructed with 14 walls and 2 staircase with designed openings and angles. Between the walls, interesting space and visual connections are created. The element of the arch-shape of the original MoCA building was also applied in the design, attempting to achieve the contrast between modern art work presented and the antique spatial mood.
In the design, there are 14 walls between which there are different floor plates providing stopping platforms for visitors. The old brick walls, the arch-shaped openings of the wall and the continuous beams crossing overhead create a strong sense of industrial history, while the grand openings of every space and the arrangements of wall positions provide a modern artistic sense. The different angles between the walls create interesting spaces and the openings on the wall provide various perspectives through spaces to the view of gardens or historical buildings. The floor on ground level is divided by different materials: grassland, sand and pebbles, to indicate the fringe of space realms as well as provide artistic elements into the art exhibition.
Studio participants will progress their research by choosing and working through a specific building material—examining its economic flows, physical capacities, and cultural properties, and how these understandings can generate architecture that resonates with habitation and use. As part of their final projects, participants will propose contemporary methods of making, assembly, and craft that resume control and expand the possibilities of this disputed territory for the design field.