EDDEA’s proposal for a library on the Taiwanese island of Kinmen features in Metalocus and Designboom
The specialist magazines ‘Metalocus’ and ‘Designboom’ have covered the proposal drawn up by EDDEA and Leching Chiang for the future Kinmen Library and Art Museum, on the Taiwanese island of the same name: a singular project set in the midst of nature, at the foot of a hill that was once a military defence zone.
In their respective features, these two international references in architecture and design describe the building, which opens up a series of inner courtyards connected to the landscape, around which the three main parts of the programme are arranged: museum, library and multi-purpose space.
On the island of Kinmen, off the south-east coast of mainland China, stands the hill that once housed the garrison for brigade-level troops of the area Defence Command’s central section, whose infrastructure is now preserved as historic heritage. Its three most characteristic features are the military trench, the sunken wetland and the group of protected trees.
The building proposed by the EDDEA and Leiching Chiang teams, led by Luis Ybarra and Hsieh Menghan respectively, takes in all three features and engages with them: it rebuilds the edge of the wetland, leaves 100% of the protected trees untouched and opens up a new reading of the trench as a landscape element.
The resulting volume sits half-buried at the edge of the wetland, allowing the military lookout to be fully preserved, while on the opposite side it presents an entirely new façade to arriving visitors.
Access is by bridges over the sunken wetland that link the car park with the different entrances. The main entrance is reached across the museum bridge, while the library walkway provides access for members. The route through the building leads to the library’s open space, with views out to the sea and the coast of mainland China.
Sustainable design
The proposal embraces sustainable design, with solar panels on the volume’s pitched roofs covering a total area of more than 2,500 square metres, a timber structure that reduces carbon emissions, and rainwater drainage that collects water in an underground tank for general use and irrigation.
The landscape strategy rebuilds the trench as a walkable surface and traces a loop around and through the building. Landscape and building intersect at two points, the museum’s inner courtyard and the library’s inner courtyard; after crossing these spaces, the path connects with the trench.
Along its course the trench offers different kinds of space: narrow paths where visitors feel their connection with the ground, points where it opens up to the landscape with steps for reading or resting, and points where it carves into the terrain to create sheltered spaces for readings, exhibitions and performances, surrounded by the protected trees and views of the original landscape.
The phasing concept treats the library and the museum as the priorities: either could be built on its own before the other, its edges closed with the same glazing system as the library’s open space. The multi-purpose part of the building could then be added at a later stage as the link between the two.