Keelung Crystal

With the overt intention to create a new identity for Keelung, the project aims to become both a global gateway and a local destination, a metropolitan space for public use and access to the waterfront that visually and conceptually connects the city and its hills with the harbor and the Chinese ocean. Atop an urban podium with a public park sits a contorted crystalline shape cracked open by a massive open atrium. The coiling mass shifts direction as it loops and folds onto itself, with hovering projections facing the most important vistas within the site.

Like a large, amethyst geode, the monolithic nature of the exterior mass contrasts with the extremely ornate environment of the open-air plaza. The atrium is articulated with a rusticated facade treatment that produces a distinct sense of cavernous interiority. The project’s contorted shape generates an ambiguously iconic presence in the harbor: at times solid, smooth, and monolithic; at others, porous, textured, and multifaceted.