Hualien Residences, Residential Housing Taiwan, Holiday Apartments Design Images

Hualien Residences Taiwan

Taiwanese Residential Development design by BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group

9 Nov 2015

Design: BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group

Location: Hualien, Taiwan, Republic of China

Photos by Jinho Lee

Hualien Residences in Taiwan by BIG

Hualien is a rapidly developing city located in the middle portion of Taiwan’s East coast. TLDC, a prominent land developer based in Taipei, has recently obtained license to turn what used to be an industrial and factory region into a world class beach resort.

The site is located prominently along the coast and near the intersection of two river deltas. Taiwan’s spine of mountains can be seen to the west while the coast is to the east; Hualien city is to the north.

For the masterplan, a language of green landscape stripes is used to create a mountain landscape of commercial and residential program that reflect their natural counterparts in the background. The stripes run east-west to frame the best views while also becoming an optimal shading system for Taiwan’s hot and humid tropical climate. High glare, low angle morning and evening sun is effortlessly blocked by the stripes while favorable north-south light is allowed into the units. Green roofs further mitigate heat gain and combined with the striping create a low energy masterplan.

Hualien Residences, designed by BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group, kick off sales with a complete model unit on Taiwan’s East Coast. The 1000 sqm show home offers a glimpse into the lifestyle and amenities of the development, including a new furniture line designed exclusively for the Hualien Residences by KiBiSi.

Located 5 km south of Hualien City, the new Hualien Residences, totaling 120,000 m2, are developed by Taiwan Land Development Corporation. The project seeks to preserve and enhance the beauty of the surrounding nature while creating a dense neighborhood of holiday homes that offer the future residents an active and social lifestyle outside the city. The first phase is expected to begin construction in 2016 and be completed by 2018.

BIG’s design for the Hualien Residences evokes Taiwan’s spine of mountains to the west, appearing like a stylized landscape of hills, valleys and canyons. The floor plates are broken down into slim landscape stripes, covered by green vegetation. The volumes are shifted to ensure that daylight and views reach deep into the residences – and dip down to form lush pedestrian canyons and shortcuts between the buildings.

“The Hualien Hills are a pragmatic utopian attempt at rural densification where the ecological qualities of nature aren’t consumed by the urban development, but rather extended and amplified. Where the Spaniards found ways to drill homes and cities into the porous rocks of the local mountains in Guadix, the Taiwanese are now building cityscapes of inhabited hillsides in Hualien.”
Bjarke Ingels, Founding Partner, BIG.

On a backbone of efficient layouts and rational circulation, the undulating roofs of the buildings provide the neighborhood with a great variation in residence types and communal spaces. Inside, the apartments inherit attributes from the angled silhouettes to add an almost traditional vernacular feeling of attics and porches in the middle of the dense modern development.

KiBiSi’s exclusive furniture series compliments the architecture of the residences. A collection of 8 different typologies is inspired by Scandinavian design and the folding hill structure of the building. The series includes lounge seating and sunbeds with corded welt edging that combines craft and comfort. This is accompanied by a wooden dining table, LED lamp, drawer unit, coffee table and technical shelf system with a flexible parallelogram construction that adapts to the tilting wall angles of the building.

The landscape stripes run east-west to block glare and thermal exposure from the low-angle morning and evening sun. The form and orientation of the structure creates cool and comfortable microclimates at the pedestrian level. The landscaped roofs further mitigate heat gain to increase the comfort of the balconies and terraces, diminishing the energy loads for cooling.

Hualien Residences in Taiwan – Building Information

Name: Hualien Residences
Client: Taiwan Land Development Corporation
Location: Hualien, Taiwan
Size: 120,000 sqm

Collaborators: RJW, ARUP, Treegarden, Ken Sakamura
Partners-in-Charge: Bjarke Ingels, Jakob Lange, Finn Nørkjær
Project Manager: Andrew Lo
Design Architect: Cat Huang
Showroom Team: Eric Li, Anu Marjanna Leinonen, Jinho Lee, Kekoa Charlot, Alberto Herzog, Jaime Oliver Galienne, Horia Spirescu, Min Ter Lim, Junjie Yan, Dominic Black, Angelos Siampakoulis, Qianqian Ye, Emily King, Lucas Carriere, Miao Zhang, Ren Yang Tan, Andre Schmidt

Photography: Jinho Lee

Hualien Residences in Taiwan images / information from BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group

Location: Hualien, Taiwan

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