A DAY OF DEFAMILIARIZING

LAYER UPON LAYER

In modern society, people’s lives are restrained by families, friends, and work. People live monotony lives subject to time. People are used to finishing tasks quickly, fulfilling their free time, replying, and receiving information immediately. People nowadays often overlook the good things in life.

This project is a reflection of monotonous life in a fast-moving modern society. By integrating the feeling of speed and time elapsing, people will perceive different heights and distances on the horizontal site. The vertical tower form of the transit station will make people rethink the question, “How do we experience time?” and have an opportunity to get rid of the monotony of life.

As a container for change in the external environment, the architecture makes time perceivable. As time goes by, the atmosphere of the space will change the way we understand the space.

Time / Efficiency / The loneliest station

Station, a node of the transportation network, is a part of most people’s life. People go to work and travel to other places from stations. Timetable in the station organizes not only train schedules but also the interval time people wait for trains to make stations operate quickly and efficiently. It is a combination of speed and efficiency.

Surrounded by the blue sea of Taiwan Strait, endless mango fields, and beautiful starry nights of southern Taiwan, it seems to be a totally different feeling in Neishi station. Neishi station is in Pingdong, the south of Taiwan. Only one train will stop here every day. As a result, less than one person is getting on and off every day on average. Unlike other stations, Neishi station seems to have nothing to do with time, speed, and efficiency like any other station.

With the implementation of the Hengchun Sightseeing Railway Project, Neishi Station will become a transfer station for the railway, sightseeing train, and bus in 2024. It will be known as a transit point across Taiwan for passengers who want to go to Kenting.

This new transfer station proposal looks forward to providing people with opportunities to get rid of inertial life. People can get involved in the slow pace of Neishi and choose to experience travel and life in different ways while they are waiting for trains rather than ignoring the beautiful things around them when they pass by in a rush.

Closeup view: pipes and purifiers

The pipes attached throughout the whole building connect all the spaces in the building. The water purifiers change colors according to the status of water purification.

Station Tower

The implementation of the transfer station, while bringing tourists to the Neishi, also destroys the originally slow and lonely pace. When society continues to develop, people become numb to the chase of time. In a fast-moving life, people gradually forget, “How do we experience time?”

The new design of the transfer station proposes the possibility of redefining programs with time for the reconstruction of the station. The transfer station integrates speeds people would perceive at different heights and distances on the site with the form of a tower. The tower consists of a space with programs that intersect into a path to the top. People would slowly establish a dialogue with the external environment and time to extend people’s perception of time and speed as they climb up through space and activities (auditorium, Seaview library, swimming pool, mango shaved ice shop, and capsule hotels).

Design Approach

Because of Hengchun Sightseeing Railway Project, the volume of the station building will become much more significant than now anyway. Making the station building taller instead allows the building to become be a vertical container that integrates different kinds of speed on the field. A taller tower could also create a dialogue with the platform. The passengers’ feeling of various distances and different heights to the building could provoke passengers’ curiosity about the tower and the external environment during the transfer. Besides, it creates opportunities for passengers to get out of monotonous life.

The concept of the tower can be described in the drawing below. The triangles are the platforms of three different transportation systems, and the thick dotted line is the primary path for people to transfer from the platform to the tower. In addition to the primary path, there are trails where people can explore the site next to each platform. Both roads allow people to reach the transfer tower, and the passenger can take either one as their will. The tower is divided into two parts. The outer part is the space for exploring the natural scenery of the site, and the inner part is the hall of the transfer station, connecting platforms.