“Crumpled” curtain wall inspired by paper

The hotel project site is next to the historical assembly hall. The assembly hall is a significant landmark in the collective memory of the current generation of citizens, and is the place where Chiang Kai Seik used to deliver speeches to rallying crowds gathered on its expansive plaza. On site is a 15F exiting building that was the home office of the first newspaper in Taiwan. To address this unique place, the new facade design uses the building’s own newspaper background as a driving concept.

Transforming the iconic identity of the newspaper from paper to glass, the hotel is sheathed in a new glass curtain wall that progresses from “crumpled folds” at the ground level to a smoothed-out glass plane at its 50m height. “Crumpling” the exterior of the lower floors gives scale and texture to the otherwise flat glass curtain wall, and addresses its rusticated cobbled-street assembly hall neighbour. The crumpled design concept expresses the building’s newspaper history in a bold urban statement.

The geometry of “crumples” consist of an array of open-edged pyramids that protrude or recess into the plane of the curtain wall. The design system gives the tower a crystalline reflective identity visible from a distance away.

scope: architecture
client: private
site: Taipei
design: 2012-2013