Tainan: The Latest Architecture and News

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MVRDV has broken ground on a wholesale market for fruit and vegetables in Tainan, Taiwan. Defined by a terraced, accessible green roof, the open-air market will serve as both an important hub in Taiwan’s supply chain, and a destination for meeting, socializing, and taking in views of the surrounding landscape.

Named the “Tainan Xinhua Fruit and Vegetable Market,” the MVRDV scheme transforms an often-prosaic aspect of the food industry into a public experience of food and nature. Located in a strategic position between the city and mountains, with good public transport links, the scheme sits at a convenient node for traders, buyers, and visitors.

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Bio-Architecture Formosana (BAF) together with Carlo Ratti Associatti have won the international competition for the Southern branch of the Taiwan National Library and Repository in Tainan, Taiwan. With the concept of "Library as a Town", the team created a proposal for a new public building that will accommodate a library, book museum and a joint archives center. Selected among nine competitors, the winning design will be placed in the southern part of Taiwan in the XinYing District. The proposal is made to investigate the role of the library in the future.

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MVRDV, working with co-architects KAI Architects, has designed a new Y-shaped residence in Northeast Tainan, Taiwan. Known appropriately as Y House, the 330 square meter (3,552 square foot) villa will become a standout addition to a new residential development aimed at becoming a weekend retreat for city workers.

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With a death toll that may exceed 100, the unfortunate collapse of the 17-story Weiguan Jinlong (Golden Dragon) apartment complex in Tainan this past Saturday has caused some major confusion. As the BBC reports, the 200-unit building, built in 1983 by a construction company that has since gone out of business, crumbled after a 6.4 magnitude earthquake while surrounding buildings remained unscathed. Though some are suspicious of the use of empty oil cans as fillers in the concrete pillars, structural engineers do not believe that to be the cause. The building is under investigation for "shoddy construction." Its developer (Lin Ming-hui) has been detained on charges of negligence leading to death.

MVRDV, working alongside The Urbanist Collective and LLJ Architects, has been selected in a competition to transform downtown Tainan in Taiwan with their design for new green corridor and urban lagoon connecting the city to its waterfront. Transforming the area of Tainan known as the T-axis, the design will see the city's Haian Road turned into a public park and connected to the city's canal by demolishing the existing China-Town Mall, a commercial structure built alongside the canal in 1983 and described by MVRDV as a "rotten tooth of downtown Tainan."

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