The proposal for the New Harbor Service building by IaN+ aims to define a simple and severe architecture. The project’s construction scheme reflects eastern philosophy; its clean aesthetic and unadorned simplicity, where structure turns into a decorative system clearly defining space. The grandeur of the complex will become the new symbol of the city and at the same time, these openings as large telescopes, frame the view from the city towards the sea and the infinite. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The architecture loses its stability, its firmness, the city and the landscape disperse and resolve on the core surface. The building, despite the apparent compactness, is divided into 4 main towers. A first subdivision was made by distinguishing governmental functions and autonomous, and those closely connected to the terminal, which will occupy three connected units. Each has specific features, depending on the intended use. In each tower there is a central core of emergency stairs, around this nucleus are distributed various functions. By the stairs we find the services for employees and room for the press, located in a central position does not require direct light.
The first tower is more isolated than the others and with a separate access; it has no direct connection with the terminal. Here were placed the offices, aimed at checking goods and passengers, the offices of the police, customs and immigration agencies. In the second tower we placed offices dedicated to klpc on direct connection with service traveler spaces. The third tower contain all the offices of Keelung custom bureau. The fourth tower contains the offices of the Port Bureau, MOTC. In the lower levels that connect the three towers are placed all those functions, such as conference hall, office and Harbor Berth allocation Room and some exposition spaces, common to all three buildings. For the same reason, restaurant was located on the rooftop of the second tower, so as to be easily reachable from the other buildings with connections to the same altitude. Finally in the base, was placed the terminal post office, directly accessible from all the buildings.
Summarizing the project consists of two levels of underground parking, three levels of the terminal, and an additional base that collects shared spaces, above which start three towers, and another independent tower. The outer grid is a structural facade and also a link between the various buildings, going to fill large holes that are created between themselves. This modular grid is also used as attack for the boarding gallery and connection to the bridge of the ships. In the offices areas reserved, the modular grid instead serves to support the lightweight Horizontal End-Suction connections between the different blocks. The new building, within its functional and organizational organicity, is composed by four different volumes one facing the other, so to define a dynamic interstitial space.The result is the activation of the central voids, and each of these becomes a sort of another building. This interstitial space is a real vertical garden, organized on various panoramic terraces, connection places between the working area and the entire natural and artificial landscape around it.
The building will turn into the new city symbol, a touristic attraction, the central hub of the existing commercial district. We wonder it is possible to give a surplus value the project, uniting the form to the function, rediscovering and recreating a space perceived as a complex urban environment. This project wants to define a building where the form communicates its functional qualities, simultaneous spatial autonomy and peaceful harmony with the context; a building designed primarily as a public space merged with the urban space that surrounds it.
The landscape design project is on two main levels. At +0,00 m we find: the cargo warehouse, the luggage center and a platform coach for bus and trucks.This level turns out to be completely confidential service, and then restricted to a movement dedicated only to staff and professionals. The public square in front of the entrance of the terminal, is located at an altitude of +3.50 m, to allow public access. It connects with the portion +0.00 through a park that slopes down, reusing the land obtained from the excavations carried out for the underground parking. The large amount of soil derived from the excavations allows for a real park accessible by the public and serves as a filter between the technical areas and those for travellers.
All the communal spaces and the workspaces have been designed in order to maximize the internal environmental comfort and make the most of particular privileged views of the environment. On the definition and calibration of the spaces to allocate to the different companies we particularly focused our attention on the flexibility and adjustment concept, to the disposition of those spaces to the different working organizational models. The flexibility concept is not directed to the research of an infinite space combination and use possibilities, but rather toward the determination of different space layout solutions characterized by some invariants and variables.
Despite appearing as a single building, the complex was actually designed as a set of 4 towers, each of them in fact works independently. Each building consists of a central core made of reinforced concrete, containing stairs lifts and courtyards technicians; to this core are hooked load-bearing floors consist of a frame of metal beams cha are going to form a mesh of 4×4 m. The mesh itself is resumed on the facade, and through a double frame the same size, are supported the large glazed modules. The structure continues also inside the big hole, where we put the vertical gardens, and it collaborates to support the big towers’s cantilevers.
The structure extends beyond the building so to blur its borders both in elevation and in plan. The building is part of the skyline of Keelung, compared to the same quadrant with the adjacent urban area that will house the new business. As a large portal to the city, the building welcomes those arriving by sea. The building with its windows appear and disappear, depending on how light hits the front, the grille that extends beyond the perimeter helps to make evanescent limits.
Architects: IaN+ Location: Keelung, Taiwan Design Team: Giulia Giusti, Giuliana Sibilia, Gaetano di Francesco, Ivo Petri, Alessandro Piccirillo Client: Port of Keelung, Taiwan International Ports Corporation, Ltd. Type: New Harbor service Status: International competition Surface: Site area 50.000 mq; Buildings 121045 mq Year: 2012
