After 5 years of construction, the new Central Park of the City of Taichung, in Taiwan, located on the site of the old airport, is nearing completion. With a budget of 90 million USD, this public park of 67 hectares will become the center of a new district of 256 hectares. Central Park is designed by Philippe Rahm architectes, mosbach paysagistes and Ricky Liu & Associates after winning the 2011 international competition. The park will be fully open to the public in September 2018, 24 hours every day.
The park masterplan is designed to enhance the comfort of visitors by naturally strengthening certain existing regions with slightly colder, drier, or less polluted microclimates. By mapping three existing climatic parameters on the subtropical site—heat, humidity, and pollution—they have been mitigated by a gradual densification of 12,000 trees, planted to create different comfort zones called Coolia, Dryia, Clearias. Three main paths (Cool path, Dry path, Clean path) connect all these specific climatic lands, offering a diversity of promenades, from the flat clear path to the more athletic dry path.
A continuous, two-kilometer-long landscape topography, from south to north, spanning east-west roads, models the relief of the terrain with hills and valleys, creating detention basins for storing rain water during heavy rainfall and allowing a continuous and safe walk. Punctuating the park, 12 pavilions relating to the 12 senses, allowing extraordinary, poetic, and playful sensory experiences.
The 0.5 hectare Meteorological Garden is located on the north east part of the park. It is a unique place of freshness in the park, offering different ways of cooling the space and thebody, using natural and artificial technics. The Stratus Cloud and foliage of many trees help to lower the temperature of the air by evaporation, which, by becoming gaseous, withdraws energy from the air. Cold Light, Moon Light, and the tree canopy reduces the heat input of direct sunlight by creating shade. Finally, the Anticyclone and Desert Wind, by blowing fresh air on the visitors, cool the skin by convection. The energy used by these climatic devices is entirely renewable and green, by using photovoltaic energy to move the air and geothermal energy to cool the air.
In the center of the park, the 3500 square meter Visitor Center named Climatorium hosts a café, an information point, and offers three climatic and educational spaces to sensually experience climate and its change by reproducing in real time the climate of the Jade Mountain in Taiwan (Coolium), the perpetual dry day of November 21 in Taichung (Dryium), and the real time uchronian climate in Taichung, but without the industrial pollution and global warming effect (Clearium).
The whole park’s energy is produced on site thanks to 10,000 square meters of photovoltaic panels installed at the north and south. Mounted high, like a canopy, photovoltaic panels sift the sunlight, creating a softer atmosphere to the landscape below.
Climatic sensors placed every 50 meters crisscross the park and measure in real time the air temperature, sunshine, wind, humidity and air pollution intensities. The data collected generates a map of the park that is accessible on smartphones, indicating the particular climatic conditions of each place in the park, and allowing visitors to adapt their walk accordingly.