The Chudong Parking Structure

Q-LAB

Short description

The Chudong parking structure is situated in a suburban town of Taiwan where its population is less than one hundred thousand people and its demographic composition is made of mostly Hakka Group.

The economic of this particular town is heavily based on tourism and agriculture and therefore the central market plays a significant role in the day to day life of its people. However, the traffic around it has been horrendous, and to find a parking space would require a miracle. Therefore to build a parking structure has been the primary goal to accommodate this urgent needs.

The design of Chudong Parking Structure set out to respond to the chaos of its immediate surrounding with simplicity in geometry. The building in plan is composed of two semicircles on two ends which are built with a pair of shear walls for taking the majority of seismic loads while the rectangle in between is constructed of simple post and beam structure that accommodates most of the parking requirements. The resultant form is both light in tectonics and rich in cultural representations especially the louver exterior provides a visual reference to the Hakka Umbrella artifacts.