Phase Shifts Park (Central Park)

Humanity is faced with challenges on the scale of the resources at its disposal. There is no longer any room for sterile binary discourses. Phase Shifts Park proposes a dialogue between the physical worlds: soil and air with the inhabited worlds: culture and nature, on the scale of the arrival of future inhabitants on 230ha. Situated beneath the Tropic of Cancer, Taiwan is warmed by the Kuro-Shio, one of the largest marine currents in the world. The island possesses a hot and humid tropical climate. The target of Central Park is to give back the outdoors to the inhabitants by creating landscapes where the excesses of the climate of Taichung are reshaped. The park uses a specific language, one of universal reach in its capacity to relate the issues at stake at different scales. The geographic scale by the transformation of an airport into an urban landscape; the urban scale by the provision of unique cultural facilities integrated into a vast public terrain; the domestic scale is the porosity between districts that allow sharing of recreational opportunities. The interlocking of these levels is a unique achievement. The design tools explore lithosphere design -water, topography, soil- combined with atmosphere design -heat, humidity, and pollution. It organizes a range of landscapes distributing more comfortable ‘niches’, densified and dilated to highlight eleven resorts. The atmosphere performing is emphasized by the lithosphere resources running with a singular path through leisure lands, sports lands, and plays lands. The landscape pulls from North to South. Urban traffic is partially covered by infrastructures incorporated into the ground of the park, introducing anfractuosities that protect passers-by from urban traffic while ensuring continuity, running 2.7km south to north of animal, plant, and human populations. On the surface, the hills establish a framework of vast horizons and continuities. Yet standing before them, they are also intimate and protective, for the staging of cultural events or regular shelter. The park acts as a moderator: it proposes a variety of beaches, gardens, of places and offers to the people of Taichung sensual experiences, partly based on the principle of senses of Rudolf Steiner, with twelve Fields providing visitors with places for gaming, meeting or just walk around powerful landscapes. The park is an essential and necessary one today, of well-being, comfort, and sensual pleasures to bring to the inhabitants of big metropolitan cities.