Liquid Physics - Kaohsiung Port and Cruise Service Centre International Design Competition.

'Liquid Physics' is ETT's response to the competition brief for a port terminal and administrative facilities for the Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung. The building should act as a maritime gateway not only to the city, but also to Taiwan in the larger sense - Kaohsiung being its largest port city.

The design thus attempts to resolve this intertwining of the ocean and the city by embodying the experience of the ocean and ocean-travel through its immersive spatiality and a sense of freedom, open-ness and vast-ness. Like an ocean liner, it offers vantages and lookouts towards the city, the anchored cruise liners and the ocean beyond. The main terminal facility hovers over a fluid landscape of transportation infrastructure and de-territorialised public urban space leading to the quayside - the two connected primarily by a pair of ramps that carry the flow of opposing streams of people between city and ocean - from the arrival hall and towards the departure hall; whilst offering the casual citizen the opportunity to access the roof deck over the terminal that becomes a park / playground for the city at the edge of the water - a landscape from where to connect to the sea in the distance.

The building would offer its users and experiencers the sense of being on the 'high-seas' - surrounded by a sense of vast-ness, open-ness - the sense of an imperceptible immersive whole; the sense of being humbled and dwarfed by the infinite horizon of sea and sky - the sense of being submerged, immersed, weight-less, buoyant - one amongst many others - swirling around oneself.

As such the building creates a long, low, horizontal 'hill' against the future verticality of the city, from where one can access the 'boats' - a reference to the low-slung ranges that encircle the port city, as well as a metaphor for an ancient way of 'climbing-up-to-the-boat'.

The administrative facilities are housed in a building that essentially spirals upward from the roof deck or the 'city deck' - carrying the swirling current of space and people whilst offering a vertical anchor or marker - from where, not unlike the captain's bridge on a ship, the control centre at the peak lurches outward from the building - a gesture towards the sea as well as providing clear and unhibdered visiblity.

Design: ETT, 2010;

Partners/Founders: Jude D'Souza & Suprio Bhattacharjee;

Collaborators: Bhavya Vora & Vittal Sridharan

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