Taiwan Architecture Awards recognise the Kaohsiung Pop Music Centre by Made In and EDDEA
The 2023 Taiwan Architecture Awards have honoured the Kaohsiung Pop Music Centre – in whose design and delivery EDDEA took part – for its diverse planning and multiple spatial levels, and for creating a lively outdoor environment and a hub of activity in the area where it stands. This year, 12 projects out of the 239 initially selected reached the final.
Promoted by the National Institute of Architects of the Republic of China, these awards are the most important of their kind in the country, and their jury is made up of leading professionals. The Pop Music Centre received the ‘Special Award for Urban Vitality’ in recognition of the transformation the project has brought to the city.
The project stems from the first prize in an international competition awarded in 2011 to the Spanish team Made In, in which EDDEA took part. Seeking to create a fabric that would become part of the city’s everyday life and offer the people of Taiwan spaces for activity, the Seville studio revisited the concept through diagrams of pedestrian flows and facilities.
As EDDEA co-founders Luis Ybarra and José María de Cárdenas recall, the Kaohsiung Pop Music Centre is “one of the greatest challenges we have faced in our career, and it is now an honour to have received this prestigious award, especially given the jury’s reasoning about what the project has meant in terms of urban transformation and the revitalisation of space for the enjoyment of the people of Taiwan”.
Designed for living together
Set right in the port of Kaohsiung, at the mouth of the Love River, the scheme is divided into three areas and several outdoor leisure zones. It covers 11 hectares conceived for the everyday enjoyment of citizens: planned for daily strolls, created for coexistence – in short, designed to be woven into the heart of the city.
This stretch of the Love River was once a military and commercial wharf, with a long wall that kept residents away from the ocean, which led various local authorities to promote the unification of port and city. The complex now connects Pier 2, the Tourism Centre and the Kaohsiung Exhibition Centre with the new Asia New Bay Area.
A complex inspired by the sea
Taking the ocean waves as its inspiration and occupying a strategic position, the Music Centre and its auditoriums – an indoor hall for 5,000 people and an outdoor venue designed to hold up to 12,000 – form one of the most striking parts of the site. This area is crowned by two towers, 113 metres and 83 metres high.
The project also responds to the Taiwanese love of food trails, with a night market that never lacks visitors around the clock, and to its setting, linked to the design of the Maritime Museum beside the bay.
The third and final area acts as a link between the main access and exit routes in the area, from the ferry terminal to the seafront promenade, as well as other arrival points. An interior connection more than 25 metres high was also designed, in the form of ramps and escalators, joining all the areas together.
