This is a 12-story apartment building in Taipei. The residents of Taipei have devised various kinds of intermediate regions for skillful living in the hot and humid climate. There are many attractive little corners to the side of the street and useful spaces covered with a bit of roof. This project was conceived as an apartment building that would fit comfortably into that kind of Southeast Asian urban environment, but which would also propose new ideas for the 21st century.Rather than a tower of standard floor plates, we chose a setback shape that complies with height regulations while providing each unit with a large terrace. The terraces are covered with roofs and plants, creating a pleasing intermediate zone on the building facade. The 6 m grid of the rigid-frame structure is covered by a 3 m grid roof system. All roofs have the same pitch, but their directions vary to add variety to the expression. The distribution of pitch directions guides the descent of rainwater and creates a network of roofs, downspouts, and narrow vertical pillars that adds rhythm to the elevation. It is fair to say that the flow of rainwater determines the flow of the facade.
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