Taipei Performing Arts Center proposal by Francois Blanciak Architect

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Earlier this year, we featured the Performing Arts Center proposal of Morphosis, NL Architects, and Abalos+Sentkiewicz, in a competition that was finally won by OMA.

Today, we show you Francois Blanciak Architect’s proposal. As a cultural reference to a taiwanese aboriginal construction technique using slabstone heaps, the project similarly piles up 4 slabstones (3 containing theaters, 1containing administrative spaces) in a cairn-like structure. In order to emphasize the public nature of the building, it is elevated on top of a wide upper plaza, upon a plinth that liberates the movement of pedestrians on the ground level.

Seen at designboom. More images after the break.

 
 
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pathos says:

yay, a giant birkenstack

 
# April 28, 2009 at 20:21
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jonasll says:

things are getting absolutly ridiculous nowdays!

 
# April 28, 2009 at 20:26
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arch critic says:

this is bad on so many levels….literally.

 
# April 28, 2009 at 21:04
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52 says:

wow…is there a flush button?

 
# April 28, 2009 at 21:17
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kc says:

funny project…ahhh…
i mean..if u want some kind of pebbles..make them flatter and about the same volume…then it could be interesting…please!!

‘this is bad on so many levels….literally.’ yes.

 
# April 28, 2009 at 21:27
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xa says:

Thankfully, this project will never be constructed.

 
# April 28, 2009 at 21:37
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bothands says:

haha, what a pile of…

 
# April 28, 2009 at 21:45
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archdork says:

In a way, I’m impressed.
These architects are so bold that they just couldn’t wait any longer to throw this to public. Congratulations, you successfully surprised me.. just in a bad way.

 
# April 28, 2009 at 21:50
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liliang says:

i gree

 
# April 28, 2009 at 21:57
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Bo Lucki says:

WHY?

 
# April 28, 2009 at 22:08
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thiago says:

well… it could be worse…or not..

did they used these drawings to present at the competition? i can understand why they lost..

 
# April 28, 2009 at 22:23
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NMiller says:

very rarely does the day come when a project ushers in a new paradigm for architecture….

…that day is not today.

 
# April 28, 2009 at 22:49
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jchang says:

hahaha…this is truly entertaining….good joke

 
# April 29, 2009 at 00:36
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os says:

Biggest Dog`s poo!!!… Direct to guiness record

 
# April 29, 2009 at 08:27
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kk says:

yikes, nurbs are corrupting architects…big, smooth and shiny does not automatically make someting avante garde

 
# April 29, 2009 at 08:47
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ben says:

IF i tried to pass this off as a project in my school of architecture, I would get laughed out of the place.

Why should professionals be allowed to get away with it???

 
# April 29, 2009 at 08:48
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Balkan says:

horrible. Go back to school!!!!!!!!!!!!!!First class please!

 
# April 29, 2009 at 09:46
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brandon pass says:

looks more like animal droppings than stones…this architects needs to stop insulting the world and its inhabitants with its mental detritus. what makes the cairn’s so impressive is that there is NO F’ing structure….its beauty is derived from the balancing of seemingly incompatible forms/shapes. Not the invisible weaving of a massive super structure to create false forms. This is just nonsense wrapped in stone to look like stone. When will these idiots wake up and understand that the world they are longing to cling to has long since past them by. where is the responsibility in the design of such a farce.

 
# April 29, 2009 at 09:47
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Gibby says:

Somebody had to do it…enjoy.
https://ilocker.bsu.edu/users/mdgibson/WORLD_SHARED/architectural_defecation.jpg

 
# April 29, 2009 at 10:54
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patentpolice says:

I didn’t know turds could have a patina

 
# April 29, 2009 at 11:06
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that is absolutely ridicules.

 
# April 29, 2009 at 11:32
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JKH says:

Morphosis had the best proposal.

 
# April 29, 2009 at 11:59
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kevin says:

It just a funny idea.

 
# April 29, 2009 at 12:03
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Lucas Gray says:

It’s incredibly hard for our profession to get the public to take us seriously and this is exactly the reason why.

 
# April 29, 2009 at 13:27
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KL says:

They have an exploded axon of freakin ROCKS!!! WTF?

 
# April 29, 2009 at 13:47
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rajay says:

what a joke!..i thought that we had enough jokes with gehry´s,calatrava´s,zaha´s etc..with this kind of works in a few years the world will become in a worldwide disneyworld or something like that

 
# April 29, 2009 at 14:00
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archaalto says:

this is just a giant Cairn…
Cairn at Wikipedia

 
# April 29, 2009 at 14:31
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bentply says:

At first thought…the project is a joke, but Blanciak is definitely creating(on paper) some interesting work. He’s worked closely with Gehry, Eisenmann, and BIG. He also wrote the great book SITELESS: 1001 Building Forms.

My major problem with his projects are his laughable ignorance to scale. But, lots of well regarded architects use this same strategy (BIG, SANAA, etc). I don’t think his projects can be fairly judged until they are fully realized with facades,materials,and detail work. The thing I like about his work is that hes promoting “less talk” and less architect-specific theory. Simple ideas that non-architects can easily understand.

I do enjoy his observation tower project
http://www.blanciak.com/Incheon3.html

 
# April 29, 2009 at 15:12
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Bo Lucky says:

bentply, at your first thought you were right!!! It IS a joke… any function can be designed in any space. The “knot” tower is fabulous… I like it too in exactly the same way I like a ticket booth inside an elephant shaped kiosk and fast food restaurant inside a giant hamburger… but is this what architecture is about?

 
# April 29, 2009 at 15:26
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Marcus says:

This project is not creative at all. It is only pretending to be. We should always push the envelope but all I see here is a design that shouldve be scrapped.

 
# April 29, 2009 at 15:40
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Izzz says:

Looks like Zygmunt Rytka’s photography… Ridiculous as a building…

 
# April 29, 2009 at 16:43
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Francisco Pardo Téllez says:

Divertido desafio… mejor que las “piedras” de Medellín

 
# April 29, 2009 at 16:51
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Uli says:

Provocation is a form of getting public attention and the next project. In that sense: well done Francois.

 
# April 29, 2009 at 18:30
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Rodrigo says:

hey!!! what’s the matter???

you’re being radicals…
it’s just another style!!!!

can you guys open your little minds to new architecture???

we left behind the radicalism…isn’t it???

 
# April 29, 2009 at 18:39
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van says:

这就是一坨屎!

 
# April 29, 2009 at 20:59
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Van says:

Great! you guys are very courageous to showing this…it has great potential, BUT you didn’t took it to the next level.
what is that? a new duck? i dont call that architecture, not even mimetism. it’s just a cut and paste to another scale!
and sorry, style is just not about form…

 
# April 29, 2009 at 22:18
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sgurin says:

Очень не нравится. Отвратительно. Это не архитектура.
It is not like it. Disgusting. This is not architecture.

 
# April 30, 2009 at 00:34
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Palau says:

N I M O D O

 
# April 30, 2009 at 01:03
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damaiyanto says:

o well.., just a personal opinion; it so tempting that i’m afraid some giant kids would throw another giant rocks to that stack, then there u go, scattered theaters.. now that could be interesting..

 
# April 30, 2009 at 02:26
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Terry Glenn Phipps says:

The competition is baffling. After all, the project that won is a tennis ball held up against a shoebox with toothpicks (one guesses that the toothpicks are obligatory because the engineering challenge of a suspended sphere and a box would have just been too much). The Morphosis proposal is equally dadaist and equally pointless.

Out of the proposals this one is, actually, the most coherent. At least you might suspend disbelief for ten-seconds and think yeah, it kinda looks like a cairn – stack of stone-things, or something else. On some level this structure at least conjures references and incites opinion. To that extent it is successful.

Terry Glenn Phipps

 
# April 30, 2009 at 04:46
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Troy Lemieur says:

I see hardly any connection between the blob-like exterior with the (for the most part) rectilinear interior. What does Aborigine construction have to do with preforming arts anyways?

 
# April 30, 2009 at 10:51
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Bo Lucky says:

Isn’t it time to close this unequivocally negative sounding discussion panel and focus on providing a positive feedback to better projects than this one?

 
# April 30, 2009 at 10:57
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trimtab21 says:

LOOKS LIKE A GIANT PETRIFIED TURD

 
# April 30, 2009 at 18:38
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Derek says:

this reminds me of the dad on Clarissa Explains it All, he always designed really funny EXTREMELY literal things like this… the idea of pebbles doesn’t bother me so much as the idea of circulation.. that’s a shit ton of vertical space to get entire theaters full of people through efficiently. but… just far too literal for my taste

 
# September 24, 2009 at 11:43
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1:09 PM Apr 30th

Depois da Arquitetura Feng Shui agora a moda é a da Terapia com Pedras http://tr.im/k7FI

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12:41 AM May 1st

RT @spin: @bbluesman http://bit.ly/4LEX6 4 taiwan peeps new Taipei Art Museum design proposal

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6:02 AM May 1st

Taipei Performing Arts Center proposal by Francois Blanciak Architect http://bit.ly/4LEX6

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9:35 AM May 1st

cool building concept, maybe it will happen someday. http://bit.ly/VDY7I

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6:43 PM Dec 6th

Taipei Performing Arts Center proposal by Francois Blanciak Architect | ArchDaily http://t.co/1mnaC58M via @archdaily

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