Made In Architects Wins Kaohsiung Maritime Cultural & Popular Music Center Competition

The Spanish team Made In Architects has been announced winner of the First Prize at the Kaohsiung Maritime Cultural and Popular Music Center international competition. The team was selected from a shortlist of five stage one winners announced last September. The competition aims to make Kaohsiung become an incubator of the pop music industry in Southern Taiwan and throughout the Asian pop music network.

The project, which becomes one of the most important and of greater magnitude currently being developed by a Spanish team abroad, with an area of 100,000 m2 and a budget of 100 million euros, will have two auditoriums, an outside capacity for 12,000 people with another 3,500 seats inside, and a marine museum, a museum of music, a market open 24 hours and eight smaller multipurpose auditoriums.

Project Description from the Architects:

This project proposes a responsible urbanism based on the heterogeneity of the program, on the urban porosity and on the adaptability to the different situations and events.

We didn´t want an intervention that was working only in moments of concerts and festivals, we wanted a fabric that was forming a part of the day after day of the city offering daily spaces to the habitants of Kaohsiung.

The project develops along a bay in an extension of more than 11 hectares, meeting different situations of contour, which do that the action divides in three differentiated zones:

Zone 1: in this zone there is articulated the Outdoor Performance Area (for 12 000 persons) the Large Performance Hall (5000) and the Pop Music Exhibit Area that is a continuous element that finished off by two towers, one of 113 meters of height and the other one of 83 meters.

Zone 2: in this area we implement the stipulated program by the organization placing a night market, who supposes the form of leisure most extended in Taiwan, and that guarantees the activity in the bay during every day of the year. The Marine Culture exhibit area goes through this zone to 6 meters of heights, and is conceived as a “promenade” between the different pavilions and with the sea always present in the skyline.

Zone 3: this zone of longitudinal character connect to two important poles of attraction, the new station of ferrys in the southern part, and the new night market in the northern part. In this area, we create different streets: a gallery covered with cultural activity, from which you access to 8 Small Performance Halls (200-400 persons), a maritime walk to level +8 that has a different gardens of water, and a great walk of 10 meters rail bicycle.

The symbolic nature of this project isn´t in the fact that the towers could look like a waves, or that the intervention remember a seascape,no, we want that the project gets this character for the use that the people of Kaohsiung does of him, and for how the projects gradually gradually is incorporated in to the city as a place full of life and of possibilities of use and enjoyment.

Project Credits:

Architects: Made In Architects

Principal Core: Manuel Álvarez-Monteserin, Beatriz Pachón, Andrés Infantes, Antonio Corona, Arsenio Perez Amaral, Javier Simó, Antonio Alejandro, Lain Satrustegui, Sara Perez, Guiomar Contreras, Jorge Lopez.

Second Phase Incorporations: Leon 11 (Maria Mallo, Ignacio Alvarez-Monteserín, Jaime Lopez, Beatriz Crespo, Javier Gutierrez, Alicia Domingo, Laura Martin, Ismael García Abad, Luis Marcos & Pablo Salvador) and the architects Tere Santás and Angel J.Abruña

Infographics: Manuel Alvarez-Monteserin of manu-facturas, Ignacio Alvarez-Monteserin of Estudio Poliedro, Javier Gutierrez, Maria Mallo, Jaime López, Pablo Salvador

Socio Local Concept: Hoy Architects

International Consultancies: Acoustics, Xu acoustique, Paris; Structure, BOMA, Barcelona;
Set Design, Theatre Projects Consultants, London; Facilities, ARUP, Hong Kong

See more plans and infographics in the image gallery below. Images courtesy of Made in Architects.