OFL Lectures L005 Autumn 2017
> PHILIPPE RAHM ARCHITECTES



Author: Philippe Rahm Architectes

• OFL Lectures L_005 autumn 2017

> Form Follows Climate. About a Meteorological Park in Taiwan


• Philippe Rahm is a swiss architect, principal in the office of “Philippe Rahm architectes”, based in Paris, France. His work, which extends the field of architecture from the physiological to the meteorological, has received an international audience in the context of sustainability. He starts to teach architecture design at GSD, Harvard University, USA, in Fall 2014. He has lectured widely, including at Yale, Beijing Forum, UCLA and the ETH Zürich.




• Abstract

This publication is about the Jade Eco Park for the City of Taichung in Taiwan, an international landscape and architecture competition for a park of 67 hectares won by Philippe Rahm architectes, Mosbach paysagistes and Ricky Liu & Associates in 2011, with a construction completion in 2018. It presents original documents from the Detailed Design Phase completed in 2013 and some photographies of its construction. For Philippe Rahm architectes, Climate Change creates an opportunity to rethink architecture and urbanism with climate in mind, to shift our focus away from a purely visual and functional approach towards one that is more sensitive, more attentive to the invisible, atmosphere-related aspects of space. Slipping from the solid to the void, from the visible to the invisible, from metric composition to thermal composition, architecture as “form and function follow climate” opens up additional, more sensual, more variable dimensions in which limits fade away and solids self dissociate. The Jade Eco Park reveals how the climate can be at the base of a masterplan, adding sensorial qualities to the city at the same time as saving energy and meeting the objectives of Sustainability.
The park’s design composition is based on climatic variations, from warmer to colder, from wet to dry, from polluted to cleaner, generating a diversity of microclimates and a multitude of different experiences open to the free will of the visitors. The park’s buildings are also based on climatic issues, by dissolving in separate layers the different climatic missions of the facade, towards sun, heat, rain and pollution. Philippe Rahm architectes purpose is to say that if today climate is the problem, climate can be also the solution, by basing the design on physics, by rethinking the architecture and the urbanization of a city from an atmospherical point of view, more ecological, providing new quality of life to the inhabitant, more comfortable, more sensual.



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ISBN 9788894139464

Philippe Rahm website  
www.philipperahm.com