Metropolitan Village Tower, Architect David Gianotten Taiwan Property Design, Highwealth Construction Real Estate

Metropolitan Village, Taipei, by OMA

9 November 2023

Design: OMA

Location: Xinyi central business district, Taipei, PRC

Images © WAX Architectural Visualizations

Metropolitan Village, Taiwan

OMA’s David Gianotten and Chiaju Lin have designed the Metropolitan Village in Taipei – a high-rise residential tower in the Xinyi central business district. The 23-storey building is a vertical village shaped by the increasingly fluid boundary between living and working in post-pandemic Taipei, and the city’s diverse urban conditions.

OMA Managing Partner – Architect David Gianotten: “Housing has become increasingly multi-functional since the pandemic. For many, it is no longer only a space for domestic activities, but also for work, for socializing, for sports, among other happenings. Different than typical residential towers with identical living units, TXR has different types of spaces that encourage the residents to define their own lifestyles. The result is a vibrant vertical metropolitan village with a mix of activities.”

The Metropolitan Village consists of volumes that share a central services core. The volumes – each with a distinctive façade – interlock with each other to create more than 30 different living unit types that support various post-pandemic lifestyles: from 68 sqm studios suitable for singles working daily from home, to 165 sqm apartments with large kitchens for families, with a majority of 120 sqm apartments – the configurations of which can be easily shifted to prioritize daily living, working, or pleasure.

The building has shared facilities on different floors, which create layers of social spaces in Taipei. A business center and a meeting room on the ground floor have been designed for people working remotely. A library, a bar, and restaurants – on the upper floors aligning with the rooftops of the adjacent buildings – are central communal areas. Together with a gym and shared terraces on the roof overlooking Taipei’s cityscape, these spaces form an above ground social landscape that encourage work-life balance.

The building site is defined by the front and back sides that are distinctive in scale and character: the front side faces a 40m wide main road of the Xinyi commercial area; the back side is a 6m wide street within the Wenchang district infused with local daily activities. The volumes forming the Metropolitan Village respond to the different proportions of the buildings in Xinyi and Wenchang.

OMA Project Director in Taiwan Chiaju Lin: “Taipei is a city with a variety of urban conditions. By conceiving the Metropolitan Village as an aggregation of volumes rather than a monolithic tower, we have created the opportunities to address the different, or even contrasting, urban qualities of Xinyi and Wenchang as well. We have also lifted the lower volumes off the ground to open a new path linking the two districts at street level. This has made the ground a new stage of life in Taipei.”

The Metropolitan Village’s main façade is composed of a curtain wall system and aluminum panels that form a durable skin for the machine for living in.

Where the living spaces that require minimal privacy are located, patterned glass – commonly used in the interior of old Taiwanese apartments as partitions – has been used for the balustrades. Activities behind the patterned glass become a mosaic indicative of domesticity.

The project, commissioned by Continental Development Corporation and scheduled for completion in 2027, is led by David Gianotten from Rotterdam and Chiaju Lin from Taipei. HCCH & Associates Architects Planners & Engineers is the local collaborator. The Metropolitan Village will be OMA’s second building project in Taipei, alongside the Taipei Performing Arts Center designed by OMA / Rem Koolhaas and David Gianotten with Chiaju Lin, in collaboration with KRIS YAO | ARTECH.

Renders © WAX Architectural Visualizations

OMA

Metropolitan Village Taipei, Taiwan tower building images / information received 091123 from OMA Architects

Architects: OMA – https://www.oma.com/

Location: Xinyi central business district, Taipei, Taiwan, eastern Asia

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