photo by Chuang Kung-ju

The Taiwan High-Speed Railway (THSR), which began operations in 2007, threads its way between all the main cities of western Taiwan. The service has sharply reduced travel times, and the architecture of the stations has changed the way people think about mass transportation. Three new stations—­Miaoli, Chang­hua, and Yun­lin—were opened on December 1 of 2015.

These new stations have altered the previous focus purely on speed and functionality. They offer “green” architecture with an emphasis on environmental sustainability, integrated with special features of the localities and their ways of life. These stations narrow the gap between people and the natural environment. The feeling is just like the concept that the THSR wants to convey: “Be there!”

A “concentrated” view of Taiwan

Deputy Minister of Culture Pierre T.P. Yang, an engineer and author who has variously been an employee of the Parisian public transportation system operator RATP  and the ROC representative in France, probably has as fine an appreciation as anyone of the scenic qualities of the THSR. Many people who travel often on the THSR just sleep, get some work done, or get stuck into their smartphones, but when Yang takes the high-speed train he doesn’t waste his time with distractions. Each time he feels the train depart, he is filled with excitement and expectation, and gets ready to “deliberately and carefully observe.”

For the Tai­pei City stretch of the THSR, the rails are underground so as not to interfere with urban traffic. It is only after you leave Ban­qiao Station, in Tai­pei’s southern suburbs, that the changing scenery first appears. When you enter Hsin­chu, a center of high-tech industry, you see the landscapes of an area right at the margin between country and city. Pass through a tunnel and you are in a mountainous area, followed by rice paddies. After Tai­chung Station you come face to face with a broad expanse of green fields on a flat plain, and blue skies with scattered white clouds, providing relief from the stress and intensity of urban life. Then you pass through the Jia­nan Plain and cross the Tropic of Cancer, and you are in southern Taiwan, where a hot and intense sun greets every visitor.

Yang describes the varied views along the whole route as “intoxicating.” When hosting foreign visitors, Yang always recommends that they take the THSR, especially given their tight schedules. “In a journey of less than two hours, you can enjoy the beautiful scenery of Taiwan in concentrated form.”

Not only is there a richness of scenery outside the windows, even in the stations the sensations vary. Yang shares the following observation: If you look at the three new stations, you can see that the architects have all used light and shade to powerful effect within the spaces, while glass curtain walls draw travelers’ eyes to the outdoor views. Set your perspective to “distant” and enjoy as much as you can, and you will provoke an awakening of your sensory aesthetic.

Stations that breathe

Two architects—Charles ­Hsueh, lead architect at HOY Architects & Associates, and Kris Yao, founder of Kris Yao Artech—had a hand in the design of the three new stations. Both are not only masters of “green architecture,” they are noted for their unique “localized” style, with their works expressing defining characteristics of the surrounding locality.

After completing the THSR’s Tai­chung Station, Charles ­Hsueh took on the task of designing ­Miaoli Station. After accepting the project, he continually pondered the question: “­Miaoli is heavily populated by Hakka people, so how can I express the Hakka spirit?” Himself a Hakka, ­Hsueh for a time considered extending the core concept of the Tai­chung Station—the shuttle of a textile weaving loom—to express the sense of speed of the THSR and also the station’s function of threading together northern and southern Taiwan.

However, he later reconsidered. For one thing, people have stopped finding the “sense of speed” remarkable or extraordinary. Also, he thought that in the face of global warming, contemporary architecture should have a sense of harmonious co-existence with nature. He decided that his design team should shed the staid framework of a “train station” and, for the first time, use a “smart skin” to design a station that can “breathe.” In this way the structure can adapt to nature, and reduce energy use in any weather, cold or hot.

The team therefore studied data on the angle of the sunshine in ­Miaoli’s Hou­long Township to calculate where sunlight would be strongest on the southern side of the building, and installed solar panels on the roof, which not only provide electricity but also have the effect of blocking the sun when it is most scorching.

There is a scenic park in front of the station, planted mainly with trees and vegetation characteristic of the surrounding area. The plants in the park can cool off incoming hot winds, thereby lowering the temperature of the station and contributing to the goal of reducing energy use.

The outdoor pedestrian walkway is covered by a glass awning that is decorated with stylized patterns of tung flowers and green leaves. (The tung tree is a well-known symbol of ­Miaoli.) When sunlight penetrates through the awning, these patterns cast shadows on the ground, creating the impression that one is walking in the shade of tung trees. If you raise your head and look upward, you will not be directly struck by sunlight, but will still be able to see clear blue skies between the floral patterns. The very essence of ­Miaoli is ensconced in this design, and its underlying aesthetic conception is profound and far-reaching.

The “line of motion” of the main hall is obvious at a glance. From the entrance you can clearly see the escalators and elevators. The escalators leading to the platform are the longest of any of Taiwan’s 12 high-speed rail stations. Illumination guides passengers automatically to the place where they have to board the trains, without having to depend on direction indicators. Clouded glass ensures that women’s skirts do not become translucent. Charles ­Hsueh says that infrastructure shouldn’t have too many signage systems. Instead, train stations should be “self-identifying” spaces, so that passengers can, in the course of a leisurely and comfortable journey, appreciate the space and the architectural features, and leave with beautiful memories.

Miaoli Station has gotten rave reviews from local residents. The design reflects the Hakka spirit of frugality and hard work, and has earned the station the honor of being named a “diamond-level” green structure.

Like a surrealistic movie set

Kris Yao, who had previously designed the Hsin­chu THSR station, won the contract for designing the Yun­lin and Chang­hua stations. Yao, who studied film in the United States, enjoys envisioning architectural space in terms of “minute-long images.” Seeing in his mind’s eye travelers moving hither and thither, unsettled and alien to their environment, he wanted to create stations that would give visitors “scenes that would touch their hearts while providing some solace and comfort for the soul.”

He set out to create visuals that would impact people, and would trigger their spatial intuition and perceptivity. He also wanted to create stations that local people would identify with—that is, local residents would feel that the stations are representative entryways for, and symbols of, their own communities. Finally, he wanted stations that would generate a sense of expectation and aspiration going forward, a feeling that the future will be a better place.

The Chang­hua THSR station, which captured the 2016 “Architizer A+ Popular Choice Award” (decided by an online vote among design enthusiasts after nomination by an expert jury), is built around pillars inspired by flowers. Green plants circle the interior, and there is a natural contiguity from them to the cultivated fields outside. There is a certain sense of the surreal under the decorative lighting, as if you were on a film set.

The pillars evoke the fact that Chang­hua County is a major center of Taiwan’s flourishing floriculture industry. The most fascinating thing about them is the way they generate a sense of space, while at the same time blocking one’s line of vision. Kris Yao, who has very much the aura of an artist, invested a great deal of creative energy into designing these “arching wall-like pillars in the form of blossoms,” and they really manifest the mental imagery of a bouquet. They not only increase the visual space, they also give the stream of travelers passing under them a sense of ever-changing scenery.

The tops of the faux-flower pillars emerge through the roof in triangular shapes. They are angled to create north-facing exposure, and they allow natural light to shine onto the pillars below. The interior light is therefore also undergoing constant change depending on the angle of the sunlight.

Actually, northbound passengers just alighting may find the triangular roof features inexplicable. But when they proceed on the staircase toward ground level, what greets the eye brings instant understanding. As soon as they see a pillar below each triangular shape on the roof, and see the light reflected mirror-like from the floor, they realize: “I get it. It’s a flower!”

Travelers who raise their heads and look upward will see a ceiling of cool blue, and will naturally feel “chill” and that “there’s no rush.” One’s line of sight is then pulled toward the translucent greenhouse paneling that makes up the windows, and the encircling green plants, putting the observer in a relaxed frame of mind as these elements blur the distinction between interior and exterior.

Stepping outside the station proper, there is no sharp break in the visual line from inside to outside. Rather, there is an uninterrupted transition to the fields that surround the station. The station is located in a Chang­hua township called Tian­zhong, meaning “among the fields,” and it was lauded in olden times as one of the Eight Scenic Views of Chang­hua, a place where clouds drift in the breeze and birds flit among the paddies. Dusk brings a kind of dreamlike hallucination in purple hues, while at night you find yourself in an arboretum or conservatory from some surreal world, as if entering a scene from a science fiction movie, exploring the future.

The scenes never repeat, creating precisely the dramatic and cinematic effect that Kris Yao so loves.

Clouds, forest, light, shade

In comparison to the Chang­hua THSR station, the one in Yun­lin is relatively abstract. In several places, inside and out, Yao uses proportionately equal pillars and beams, which, when systematically aligned, create sloping curves. The creative concept is to use a repeated motif, and through the sloping curves to create a sense of continuity and flow. This is similar to pleasing music, a physical version of the flowing notes of a repeated motif on a score.

The Yun­lin THSR station utilizes very few elements. The core is composed of the flowing visual lines creating by the sloping curves and inclines. The roof, meanwhile, which consists of layered segments cascading downward, brings in a great deal of natural light, and gives the sensation of a very elevated interior space. The passage of sunlight inside and out generates areas of light and shadow, changing constantly as time passes, so that the repeated architectural motifs also appear to the eye to be evolving.

Kris Yao says, “The physical structure of a building is fixed, so I used the modulating sunlight to set the architecture in motion, creating a kind of melodic movement. You might say this is a microcosm of the changes of the natural environment, in an interior space.” Without any tricks or gambits, this design allows nature’s transformations to be manifested within a self-restrained and constricted sequence or order. The place-name Yun­lin is made up of the characters yun, meaning “cloud,” and lin, meaning “forest,” and the station’s introductory pamphlet describes it with the poetic term “cloud light, forest shade,” which Yao feels is a very apt and incisive description.

The high-speed railway has shortened distances north to south in western Taiwan, and condensed the island’s scenery. The beautiful new stations along the way help relax the minds of people on the move, each offering display window after display window of views, with a unique mix of light and shade, adding scenic and decorative colors to these brief stops in the journey of life.