Taipei 101: Aesthetics
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Design
This section of the article talks about the aesthetics and design of Taipei 101. It has been compiled from numerous sources such as websites, newspapers, magazines, various books etc. and the information has been filtered, checked and verified thoroughly. If you find any information that you think contradicts or falsely written, please alert the Webmaster together with your cited soruces.
Feng Shui
Feng Shui (风水) is the art and science of positioning objects for eg. furniture, buildings, gardens, waterfalls and even graves. This practice is estimated to be more than 3000 years old.
Taipei 101 is heavily designed within the practice of Feng Shui. The only Feng Shui problem, was a perpendicular road that ran straight into the building's site, which could bring sickness or bad business to the occupants or visitors. The problem was easily solved by adding a fountain to block off the perpendicular road.
The tower's aesthetics and design are all based on the number "8", a lucky number in the traditional Chinese culture. One example of the "8" design used in Taipei 101 is counting the number of segments (Body of the Tower) or that represents as Gold Ingots (Image on left). This type of outward tapered design in each of the 8 segments also helps to create a strong impression of a bamboo, which will be explained later in this article.
The "8" design is very much used in China. It is also a symbol of wealth, luck and success. An example of a similar structure using the "Number 8" design aesthetics is the Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai.
Design Inspirations
The design is mainly inspired by a Taiwan's native bamboo plant, A bamboo is usually hollow inside. Chinese philosophy teachings about the hollow bamboo symbolizes modesty and humbleness. This makes it easy to relate to this building. This is one of the aesthetic reasons why the building's exterior colour is green, the resemblance of a steadily rising bamboo, also reflecting the growing economy of Taiwan.
The tower is covered by a wall of green tinted glass that reflects the sky and with traditional Chinese lantern-like figures called "Ru Yi", which are placed on all 4 sides at the top of each of the 8 segments as symbols, symbolizing fulfillment. The Ru Yi symbols symbolizes authority and power, these symbols are also used to bring one's career to a higher, better level. It also protects from evil and misfortune happenings. Each of these Ru Yi symbols are 8m high.
"We designed this building based on the philosophy of integrating with nature," said C.P. Wang, architect and project captain. "It's like a plant growing to reach the sky. This is very different from the Western idea of conquering nature."
Past Design Proposals
There were also early design proposals for the vicinity. One of the older design comprises of a 60 storey tower with a set of 20 storey blocks. The entire vicinity or compound including the set of blocks must cater the exact total floor area equivalent to Taipei 101 (Which is what it is currently). Sooner or later, an 88-story tower was proposed, but the architects C.Y Lee, convinced the owner to go even higher and to be the World's tallest building.
Taipei 101 has underwent through many stages of different design proposals before it was built. There are many reasons for this, it may have been re-designed in order to comply with the building and construction authorities in Taiwan. Secondly, it was also due to aviation restrictions imposed by the Taipei Municipal (Sung Shan) Airport, due to the its projected height. Fortunately, the impose was lifted and was officially granted to construct Taipei 101 to its intended full height.
