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Architects: Atelier Let's, JR Architects
- Area: 15459 m²
- Year: 2021
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Photographs:YuChen Chao Photography
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Lead Architects: Ku, Ta-Chi, Huang, Cho-Jen
Text description provided by the architects. The site for Nanhua Glimmer locates in the countryside of Pingtung, Taiwan. Sitting at the foot of Taimu Mountain, the site previously served as an elementary school. The now decommissioned school campus has transformed into the Pingtung AI Agriculture Hub with a new landscape park for the community and the elderly. The landscape park creates a more inviting atmosphere for the locals by opening up the campus boundary and linking the new greenery with the surrounding.
Key challenges:
- Removing the former school campus wall. We negotiated and agreed with the client and authority to open the boundary and introduce lighting for the campus and the community.
- Retaining the mature trees within the campus. We achieved this by carefully planning the facilities and structural foundations considering the tree roots.
- Creating a space for all. We designed the space with barrier-free passages and eliminated the height difference across the project site.
Controlling the mist effects preciously. We investigated the wind direction and the design of the mist generating facilities to create the misty effect as the design intended. The reborn campus celebrates the regional nature features and translates them into geometric forms in the landscape design. The continuous curvature of the concrete retaining walls echoes with the patterns of the pineapple fields and the folds of the mountain ridges. The selected variety of plants within the campus presents an ecological education opportunity for the public, including the edible plants on the green hills and the restoration of aquatic plants in the eco pond.
One of our focuses in this project is to develop an aesthetic and recreational irrigating facility. In the initial three months of the project, we investigated the wind direction and environmental conditions of the project site. We worked with local suppliers in developing new irrigating facilities that fulfil two purposes – providing sufficient water to the plants and creating a misty scene inspired by the mountain mists. The mist generating facility is integrated with the lighting system to ensure safety at night.
The elements of mist and glimmer resemble the collective memory of the locals – at nights, the mountain mist flows along the ridges, creating radiances around the street lights afar. The natural mountain mist runs through the mahogany forest and pineapple fields. The recreated misty scene brings up the visual memories of gazing afar towards the mountain covered in mist and clouds.
