UN Studio has recently fin­ished up the Star Place luxury shop­ping centre in Kaoh­si­ung, Taiwan. FlickR user Hiroshiken has uploaded some photos and videos recently. The best video details the Light­ing Instal­la­tion at night.

Below is the project infor­ma­tion and photos from UN Studio (unless oth­er­wise stated):

Project his­tory
Before UNStu­dio was engaged on the project the archi­tec­tural firm of Dynasty Design Corp and HCF Archi­tects had already made a design for the loca­tion, of which the out­lines and main struc­ture were pre­served. Con­se­quently, the main struc­ture and volume of the cur­rent build­ing were pre­de­ter­mined. Within this frame­work UNStu­dio made some impor­tant alter­ations. Within the exist­ing struc­ture, the char­ac­ter­is­tic inte­gra­tion of pro­gram and con­struc­tion that UNStu­dio strives for, result­ing in the typ­i­cal column-​free spaces nor­mally pro­duced by the archi­tects, was not pos­si­ble. There­fore, in order to achieve the visual and spa­tial effects of free-​flowing unob­structed spaces by other means, a public void was intro­duced that brings day­light to the floor spaces and estab­lishes visual con­nec­tions between the dif­fer­ent floor levels.

Archi­tec­tural design UNStu­dio
Posi­tioned at an urban plaza with a round­about, the build­ing occu­pies a tri­an­gu­lar lot, giving it a wide and open frontage. Curv­ing inwardly, the build­ing embraces this posi­tion and opens itself fully to the city. For UNStu­dio the ques­tion of the build­ing began with the façade as an urban man­i­fes­ta­tion. How­ever the chosen solu­tion of a ‘deep’ front ele­va­tion, with a promi­nent pat­tern made by the appli­ca­tion of pro­trud­ing ele­ments, was imme­di­ately recon­nected to the inter­nal arrange­ment of the spaces around the atrium, the cir­cu­la­tion through the atrium and the views from the inside to the out­side. As a result, the project now con­sists of a tight pack­age of inside-​outside relations.

Inter­nal Cir­cu­la­tion Dia­gram, Photo © UNStudio

Void
The 12-floor deep void is placed beside the façade, rather than deeper inside the build­ing, in order to facil­i­tate such inside-​outside rela­tions. This void forms the main con­nect­ing ele­ment within the build­ing, with three panorama ele­va­tors and two sets of esca­la­tors form­ing the ver­ti­cal cir­cu­la­tion. The void con­sists of a straight, cir­cu­lar open­ing which opti­cally appears to slant and twist. This opti­cal effect is gen­er­ated by the way in which esca­la­tors have been posi­tioned inside the atrium space. At each floor level the posi­tion of the esca­la­tors rotates by ten degrees, result­ing in a 110 degree rota­tion from ground level to the roof.

Cir­cu­la­tion View, Photo © UNStudio

Sur­round­ing the void, an open cir­cu­la­tion space pro­vides direct access to the shops, through doors in the glazed cir­cu­la­tion walls.
Each floor can house two to seven units, which oper­ate com­pletely inde­pen­dently. Thus, in con­trast to a depart­ment store, the shop floors can be seen as indi­vid­ual stacked units, with the atrium func­tion­ing as a ver­ti­cal shop window.

The detail­ing of the cir­cu­la­tion space empha­sizes the rela­tion of the inside and the out­side; inte­rior floor tiles, arranged in the same pat­terns which are also found on the side­walk out­side the shop­ping center, reflect the radi­at­ing pat­tern of the façade. The fire shut­ters, which are posi­tioned around the cen­tral space, roll out hor­i­zon­tally from the columns, along rails which are inte­grated within recessed light­ing rings in the ceiling.

Cir­cu­la­tion View, Photo © UNStudio

Façade
The open and trans­par­ent glass façade is pat­terned with pro­ject­ing hor­i­zon­tal, aluminum-​faced lamel­las and ver­ti­cal glass fins that together form a swirling pat­tern. This pat­tern breaks up the scale of the build­ing, which, from the out­side has no leg­i­ble floor heights as a result of the one-​meter spac­ing between the hor­i­zon­tal lamel­las. Osten­si­bly, the pat­tern of lamel­las and fins acts as a sun­screen and weather bar­rier, but in real­ity the com­bi­na­tion of the wish to make a ‘deep’ façade while pre­serv­ing the inter­nal floor space was behind the choice to apply a pat­tern to the out­side frontage.

The pat­tern gen­er­ates a strong urban effect, but has been mod­i­fied on the basis of inter­nal, func­tional demands. The ver­ti­cal fins are for instance shal­lower and fewer towards the top of the build­ing, where the restau­rant is sit­u­ated, allow­ing for higher trans­parency and better views towards the park oppo­site the building.

Cir­cu­la­tion View, Photo CC Hiroshiken on FlickR

The fins are made of lam­i­nated, low-​iron glass for extra clar­ity. A ‘frit’ (dot pat­tern) has been printed on both sides of the glass, so that the fins appear white by day. Thus they seem to be made of the same mate­r­ial as the hor­i­zon­tal lamel­las, result­ing in the visual illu­sion of a uni­fied façade pat­tern. But from the inside, the glass fins offer unin­ter­rupted views to the out­side, as the dots are not appar­ent from the inside, just like net cur­tains. The pro­duc­tion of the fins, which all have dif­fer­ent dimen­sions, was facil­i­tated by para­met­ric design and pro­duc­tion tech­niques.
The façade pat­tern wraps around the com­plete build­ing, thus pro­vid­ing the closed rear facade with the same iden­tity, but in a more sim­pli­fied design.

Exte­rior Night View, Photo © UNStudio

At night, col­ored light­ing replaces the opti­cal effects pro­duced by the depth embed­ded in the façade motif, with a fluid layer of chang­ing hues and tones. The dots on the lam­i­nated glass fins pick up the colors dis­trib­uted by LED-​lights which are inte­grated at the bases of the fins. The min­i­mized light fit­tings con­tribute to the lux­u­ri­ous appear­ance of the façade. The night-​time appear­ance of the build­ing is impor­tant in Taiwan, which has a tra­di­tion of late-​night shop­ping and all-​night markets.

Feng shui
The façade pat­tern was devel­oped using ani­ma­tion soft­ware. A series of images was gen­er­ated, which the client stud­ied with the aid of a feng shui con­sul­tant. The final pat­tern was chosen because it rep­re­sents a red phoenix.

Project infor­ma­tion
12 floors, includ­ing 2 base­ment floor
GFA: 25.500 m2 excl. park­ing levels
Building-​footprint: 2.035 m2
height of facade: 51.30m / total height incl. Ele­va­tor machin­ery: 58.53m

Project Cred­its
Star Place, Kaoh­si­ung, Taiwan, 2006 – 2008
Client: Pres­i­dent Group, Kaoh­si­ung, Taiwan
Loca­tion: Kaoh­si­ung
Pro­gram: Lux­u­ri­ous shop­ping center
Design of exte­rior: Façades and light­ing, related exte­rior spaces
Design of Inte­rior: Cir­cu­la­tion zones and Public spaces
Build­ing sur­face: 25.500 m2 + 11.100 m2 for park­ing levels
Build­ing volume: 135.000 m3 + 38.000 m3 for park­ing levels
Build­ing site: 28050 m2
Status/Phase: Realization

UNStu­dio Cred­its
Ben van Berkel, Car­o­line Bos, Astrid Piber with Ger Gijzen, Chris­t­ian Ved­deler, Mirko Bergmann, Albert Gnodde, Sebas­t­ian Schott, Freddy Koele­mei­jer, Katja Groeger, Jirka Bars, Andreas Brink, Simon Kor­te­meier, Shu Yan Chan

Light­ing design: Unstu­dio, Arup Light­ing, Ams­ter­dam
Façade ani­ma­tion con­tent: UNStu­dio, Litelife (Cologne,Germany), Alliance Optotek Cor­po­ra­tion (Hsinchu, Taiwan)

Exec­u­tive Archi­tects:
HCF Archi­tects, Plan­ners & Asso­ciates, Taipei, Taiwan
Inte­rior Design: Dynasty Design Corp, Taipei, Taiwan
Design Coor­di­na­tion: Mul­berry Plan­ning and Design, Taipei, Taiwan
Light­ing exe­cu­tion: Alliance Optotek Cor­po­ra­tion, Hsinchu, Taiwan