Courtesy of Forrest Fulton Architecture
For more on this project come back after the break.
Courtesy of Forrest Fulton Architecture
Forrest Fulton Architecture designed the gateway as a large table-like space that creates a deck and plaza that juts out over the Cruise Terminal below. The large form creates a threshold for both passengers boarding and disembarking, as well as the cruise ships themselves. It is an attraction that all entering the harbor can see as the entrance or the destination.
Courtesy of Forrest Fulton Architecture
The table top holds offices and a Port Service Center. The plaza floor is carpeted with a pattern of trees, grasses and color to create micro-environments and intimate spaces. On the plinth are also a terraced resort and hotel towers. Parking, terminal drop-off and pick-up traffice, and retail space all fit under the plinth. The plinth delivers an urban room to the site, where attractions inhabit the ground and roof of the structure. The large space creates a shelter and a home for civic life in Kaohsiung’s tropic climate.
Courtesy of Forrest Fulton Architecture
The climate factors of the chosen form for the gateway are also considerable. The table creates a shaded, dry place for Kaohsiung’s hot days and rainy season which also harvests the rainwater for graywater use and is reserved in pools. The structure that supports the slab are deep hybrid virendeel-bowstring trusses that span over the plaza plinth below and allow opeb office space above and daylight to filter through the sun screen. From the distance, the form reads as a pure white line that frames the city in all directions and gives an outlook from the future of the new Kaohsiung and Southern Taiwan.
Gate of Kaohsiung / Forrest Fulton Architecture originally appeared on ArchDaily, the most visited architecture website on 22 Dec 2010.
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