[color=#008000][i]~~~ Mod’s note:
This thread was previously in the TP forum, but was moved to the Sports forum, where it would seem more at home.
- TGM 02/05/2015
Back in 1992, when professional baseball was all the rage in Taiwan, packing 12,000 fans into Taipei City baseball stadium nearly every single game, Hao Pei-chun, the head of the executive yuan at the time, promised fans that Taipei would soon have its very own Tokyo dome. In fact, the word for dome stadium in Taiwan, Giant Egg (巨蛋), comes directly from the trade marked nickname of Tokyo dome at the time, The Big Egg.
The Taipei baseball stadium was torn down in the year 2000. It's now 15 years later, there is still not a replacement baseball stadium in Taipei city. When the Taipei baseball stadium was torn down, baseball fans of Taipei were promised a domed baseball stadium over the original site by then mayor Ma Ying-jiu. As it turned out, Ma lied. Instead of a domed baseball stadium, Ma gave them a domed arena unfit to play baseball.
Then instead of picking a more appropriate location, Ma signed the historic Songshan Tobacco Plant, a giant park covered in lush green vegetation, to build a new Taipei domed baseball stadium. The contract went to the Farglory group, who partnered up with, Takenaka, the Japanese construction company that built the Tokyo dome, to make the planning for Taiwan's first domed baseball stadium.
However, in typical Taiwanese government job fashion, as soon as Farglory won the contract, they changed all the details and had friends in Taipei city government help approve their every whim. Instead of focusing on the stadium, Farglory carved out even more land and chopped down even more trees to make way for their hotels, movie theater, and department stores. They also forced Takenaka to back out of the partnership.
Takenaka originally hired world renowned architect Hiroshi Hara (原広司, who also designed the Sapporo Dome, Umeda Sky Building and Kyōto Station) to design Taipei dome. The contract winning design looked like this:
[img]https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-ck940IZwRwg/VMnI4BaRZDI/AAAAAAAAnCs/57sTNt9odC0/w506-h358/10530720_10152343460417523_3676763654406612499_n.jpg[/img]
[img]https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-oUkDRLiXoxE/VMnKZ9ma5iI/AAAAAAAAnDU/_uxn37L-55U/w506-h474/10403392_10152343462862523_131949912299769591_n.jpg[/img]
His design concept was:
1. Hara wanted to respect the significance of SYS memorial hall. Therefore the dome was shifted to avoid being on the same axis and sight line as the SYS hall.
2. He also designed a sunken stadium, where the height of the stadium would be lowed without changing the shape of the dome. It allows the dome to clear the height limitation of the Songshan airport flight zone, and lessens visual impact on SYS memorial hall.
3. Hara also wanted to make the dome as invisible as possible. The outer shell of the dome is covered with a membrane-like material.
4. This transparent membrane would make as little visual impact on the surrounding as possible, and would appear to be translucent and light weight.
Farglory wanted none of that. This is their designs, which they made changed upon changes to, and their design concept:
[img]https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-yDFsFMjC2GM/VMnLnOX03QI/AAAAAAAAnFE/3gDDyP8kjpk/w506-h378/d288436.jpg[/img]
[img]https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-V6WL9eKxofs/VMnLd33Jb6I/AAAAAAAAnEk/N4zaqU9Xe_s/w506-h380/fileUpload0130542831397514172.jpg[/img]
[img]https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-mVGeAAqYMX0/VMnK7q0PyHI/AAAAAAAAnD4/gMsgA73ZNPA/w506-h427/10459916_10152343462102523_765766534146370410_n.jpg[/img]
1. Align the stadium with SYS memorial hall, to make way for more commercial prime real estates along Zhongsiao E. Rd.
2. Raise the stadium playing surface higher up to the ground level, because digging down costs more money.
3. Screw light weight invisible membranes, they are just gonna slap metalic structures on it which is much cheaper.
4. Farglory went as far was copying another famous architect, Toyo Ito's VIVO CITY's planning. To the point where Ito warned Farglory to change the design or be sued.
Farglory's latest design change changed the stadium from a dome, to a toilet seat cover like structure. They said this would be cheaper and is the only way to clear the Song Shan air port height restriction. After all these idiotic changes, many questioned the stadium no longer is a standard baseball stadium. Farglory denies this, and published several news letter claiming the stadium design is with in IBAF regulations.
[img]https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-NS48YllOFZQ/VMnGV-yg5UI/AAAAAAAAnCI/5oM2jg0u-sI/w400-h300-no/phpJa7xFT.jpg[/img]
It would appear to baseball fans that their only concern was for the outfield fence to be 325, 400, 325 ft. away from home plate. If you look at their floor plan carefully, you would notice there are no longer any foul area in the outfields. There are some MLB stadiums that also feature a small foul line, although a tight foul area is usually only at one side of the stadium, typically tailor made for their star hitter to avoid some fly outs. However, this design has no foul area what so ever.
The altered dome also poses a problem for actual baseball playing:
[img]https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-9B1WkUjVAgU/VMigpryYJKI/AAAAAAAAtwU/Ay8filu5IQ0/w1042-h682-no/201501281529.jpg[/img]
Even in Tokyo dome, sometimes a ball is hit so high that it would hit the ceiling. Farglory's latest design is plain idiotic. It's the same kind of logic that went into altering Taoyuan baseball stadium's design so that the gate would be along the main road, and in doing so oriented the outfield to face the west, subjecting players and fans to stare into the setting sun during afternoon games.
This 28.8 billion dollar project only spends 8 billion on the domed stadium, and spends the other 20.8 billion on department stores and movie theaters. In the end, Taipei will get yet another empty promise, as all professional baseball teams have now moved out of Taipei.