Marco Casagrande is a Finnish architecture working in Taiwan... He's fairly well-known for The Chen House, but as this project proves, he is thoughtful and considerate in all of his work.
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This insertion of a Finnish sauna into an eastern urban fabric hopes to provide a point in which we can experience both the modern and the ancient. Rather than paraphrase all the ways in which this project aims to affect the city's chi, I would highly recommend visiting Marco's site dedicated to this project. It is well worth the read...
UNStudio's new project in Taiwan has a few interesting features... among them are a series of escalators that form a spiral, similar to a spiral stair... and moire pattern facade. I'm curious if the pattern is created from certain lights being turned on/off in the windows... or what. And as far as the escalator goes... I could see it actually being quite easy to navigate (not like those mall escalators where you have to walk around the whole floor to get to the next one). What do you think? . Via Gizmodo . .
If you are like me, then you probably don't work with tuned mass dampers on a regular basis. In fact, my only experience would be in structures classes and when I was studying for the ARE. So, its really cool to see a tuned mass damper, not just in a building, but actually working during an earthquake. The Taipei 101 is currently the world's second tallest building and because it is located only 600 feet from a fault line, it required a ginormous tuned mass damper. During the Sichuan Earthquake, this four story 730 ton ball kept the building from tipping over. Not bad for something that spends most of its time as a tourist destination. . Via Gizmodo . .
