TAIWAN CENTER FOR DISEASE CONTROL COMPLEX
LOCATION Hsinchu Biomedical Science Park, Taiwan
CLIENT Taiwan Centers for Disease Control / Construction and Planning Agency (CPA), Ministry of the Interior
PROGRAM Administration Center, NHCC National Health Command Center, Public Service Center, Education Center, Research & Diagnostic Center, Storage, Electrical Network and MIS Center
AREA Phase 1: 33,500 SM / Phase 2: 29,000 SM
COST Phase 1: NT$1,580,000,000 (US$52 million)/Phase 2: NT$703,000,000 (US$23 million)
STATUS Design 2008 (Competition)
CONSULTING ENGINEERING Buro Happold
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Our proposed design for the Taiwan CDC creates a new way of organizing complex space to enable advanced research to be conducted in the most advantageous of ways. Through developing each laboratory as an individual project block connected into a continuous volume of development, each program aspect is able to maintain its identifiable autonomy, while still benefiting from close proximal relationships to other aspects of the research center. Through enabling a new openness of communication, the CDC will operate in a much higher paced experimental research lab. Furthermore, this places a new importance on the notion of communication and democratic forms of organization to create a lab tasked with understanding and solution-finding for some of the most critical issues in contemporary public health. The project cascades down the site, providing a seamless plaza area to connect the project into the center of the research park that it is a part of. The building mass lifts and bends to allows for open movement at grade, and provides outdoor courtyards throughout the project acting as researcher lounges. Sharing ideas, research and results is at the center of this proposal. Finally, the developed urban form provides a new icon of progress and advancement for a laboratory created to provide the most innovative of solutions.
The structural solution for this project addresses the free form nature of the geometry for the project. Paying direct attention to the inherent overturning forces created by the shape’s elemental characteristics which deviate from direct vertical progression, a structural system was developed to provide exceptional strength, redundancy and stability, while allowing for vast interior flexibility through complete distribution of the structural load to the exterior shape of the form. The primary structural stability system for the tower is a highly efficient steel diamond grid located on the exterior faces of the tower. These diamond grid bracing elements work in concert with the horizontal and semi-vertical elements to engineer a set of triangles that distributes the load and delivers brilliant structural stiffness and stability to the design.
