Taipei, from grand stairways to a golden sphere
The National Palace Museum, Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and Taipei 101, from hillside architecture to a skyscraper after dark.
Taipei’s grand buildings gave this 2018 visit three very different stops: the National Palace Museum against a wooded hillside, the broad steps of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, and Taipei 101 reaching into the night. Between them, the city offered collections, commemoration and a close look at the engineering inside a skyscraper.
National Palace Museum
At the National Palace Museum, green roofs stretch along pale yellow walls above a wide paved forecourt. White stairways lead towards the building, and the wooded slope behind it is almost as prominent as the architecture. The long frontage sets the museum against the hillside.
The museum’s collections include painting, calligraphy, bronzes, ceramics and jade. My album records the approach outside, where the broad terraces and repeated rooflines give the building a different scale from Taipei’s towers.
Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall
The Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall has a much more vertical approach: a wide staircase leads to a deep central arch. Above the white walls, the blue roof turns upwards at its corners. The steps, balustrades and entrance form a strong central line towards the hall.
Designed by architect Yang Cho-cheng, the hall reaches about 70 metres high. Its blue tiled roof is octagonal, with double eaves. Those details explain the distinctive outline of this stop in the visit.
Taipei 101
Taipei 101 appears from two directions in the original album. Outside at night, its repeating tiers narrow towards an illuminated crown. Seen from below, the tower fills the view from its lower façade almost to the top, surrounded by dark sky.
Inside, an enormous gold sphere sits behind a barrier. This is the tower’s tuned mass damper: 660 metric tons, built from layers of steel plate to reduce the building’s movement in strong winds. The engineering provides another way to understand the tower beyond its height and skyline profile.
