Coralscape
Pingtung, Taiwan
2019
Colours of corals
Located at the Dapeng Bay National Scenic Area, Coralscape is a public art installation LAAB designed for the 2019 Taiwan Latern Festival in Pingtung. The Liuqiu Island nearby is a rare coral island in Taiwan, with rich geologic and coral life. The dynamic underwater world inspired LAAB to design a 6-meter-tall coral installation to bring the colorful underwater world on stage.
We used six groups of vault structure to design Coralscape, each was then subdivided by triangular frames. Vault is extremely efficient to structure the coral cells because of its pure axial force, producing a light and thin structure. Within each triangular frame contains 16 smaller triangular sub-frames that hold the coral cells. These triangular grids further reinforced the vault design. Frosted white sheets were used to fabricate the cell membranes as they give a softer reflection and refraction when projected with light.
The design process involves capturing the modular nature of corals, before testing different scaled models with different materials. The vault structure was then optimized by adjusting the length-to-height ratio of the vault to achieve the most efficient load path. The number of sub-frame cells was also optimized to give a slimmer structure. Because the site is in the Bay area with occasional strong winds, the design was carefully calculated to allow spaces for cell movement during windy days.
Italy A'Design Award
Winnner
Taiwan Interior Design Award
Winner
Art Installation, Pavilion Design
2019
Pingtung, Taiwan
1,200 sqft
Ministry of Transportation and Communications, Taiwan
Golden Eagle
Otto Ng, Ming Ho, Rachel Lee, CK Wong, Kelvin Lam, Catherine Cheng, Chun Hang Yip