Digital Design and Competitions – Case Study “228 National Memorial Park”

Judith STILGENBAUER

1 Introduction

Using the 228 National Memorial Park project in Taiwan as a case study, this paper explores the application of digital 3D-models as tools in conceptual design. I have chosen to focus on three main aspects: representing change and process in the landscape, using sketch models versus presentation models, and combining digital and physical models.

In 2006, the Ministry of Interior of Taiwan announced an open international design competition for the new 228 National Memorial Park, a six-hectare urban park in Chiayi City that will commemorate a national tragedy and serve as the most important Taiwanese monument to peace. The project is named for an incident that occurred on February 28, 1947, on the island of Taiwan, which after World War II was transferred from Japanese rule to the Chinese Nationalist government under Chiang Kai-shek. The event known as “228” started with a confrontation between a black-market cigarette vendor and government soldiers that led to widespread protests and mass killings all over the country. Official estimates of the massacre’s death toll range from 10,000 to 40,000. Until a few years ago, the events of 1947 were a taboo subject and details about the 228 incident, like the exact number and fate of many of its victims, had been concealed and guarded.

Objectives of the international design competition were not only to reveal the memories and the historic meaning of the 228 incident, but also to create a national symbol of peace, freedom and justice.

“CONCEAL / SURFACE”, our winning competition entry, is about time, growth, and the inevitable revelation of historical truths (Fig 1). In a sunken courtyard at the park’s center, small individual bamboo shoots will be planted on a regular grid at inauguration. They will grow, develop into a dense interwoven network, and eventually surface above the surrounding Memorial Wall structure that once concealed the forest inside the Bamboo Room. This metaphor of proliferating giant bamboo symbolizes the national memory of the “228 incident” that lives on in Taiwan despite so many years of secrecy. In time, answers and lost stories will surface and loom. The new 228 National Memorial Park in Chiayi City will celebrate the process of change and exposure. The monument is designed to achieve its meaning over time (Fig. 2).

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Fig. 1: Competition site plan, 228 National Memorial Park, Taiwan

Fig. 2: Diagrammatic growth patterns and bamboo surfacing above Memorial Wall

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2 Representing Change and Process in the Landscape

Dynamic and temporal elements distinguish open space from built form. Landscapes are not static. They develop and change. Processes in natural landscapes occur at various speeds. Some take millions of years, others minutes. Plant life reacts to the yearly pattern of seasons and the daily rhythm of night and day. Plantings evolve over the course of their lives--they grow, mature, flourish, and decay. We perceive landscape through movement in space and time.

Environmental designers throughout history intended to control nature or to “enhance” its beauty by manipulating temporal qualities and slowing change. In contrast, many recent designed landscapes embrace a new aesthetic of ephemeral characteristics such as growth, spontaneity, and decay.

Digital 3D models are an effective tool for visualizing time, change and process, for example, the growth of plants, the moving shadows during the course of a day or a year, and other temporal qualities of landscapes.

In the case of our “228 National Memorial Park” project in Taiwan, the metaphor of proliferating giant bamboo that will eventually surface above a memorial wall is pivotal to the concept. We developed abstract digital models in the design competition to illustrate the key idea of process and change in this new memorial landscape designed to achieve its meaning over time (Fig. 3).

3 Sketch Model versus Presentation Model (Physical Model Analogy) – Design Tool versus “Marketing” Instrument

During both the schematic design and design-development phases of the 228 National Memorial Park project – and throughout subsequent public hearings in Taiwan – abstract digital working models and eye-level renderings created in SketchUp and FormZ helped us analyze, adjust, and accurately represent spatial definition, layout and proportions of various iterations of the memorial park design and its elements. In addition, these images allowed us to clearly communicate our ideas and alternatives to clients and future park users during the design process (Fig. 4).

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Fig. 3: Abstract renderings of Bamboo Room and change over time

Fig. 4: Digital sketch models were used to investigate dimensions and proportions

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In the 228 project, we applied digital models and renderings purely as design tools. We refrained from creating catchy photorealistic digital imagery. Often times those laborious, seemingly realistic renderings are created to support clients’ or developers’ efforts to “sell” their projects before design details are even conceived, or they are generated as showy representations long after the actual design phase for a project is completed. In contrast, some controversial or momentous projects, like, for example, the unusual concepts and forms we developed for BUGA München 2005 (Munich National Garden Festival 2005) during my time as project manager and head of the Munich office of Rainer Schmidt Landscape Architecture, warrant elaborate presentation models – digital or conventional – to help convince clients and the public of a project’s viability (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5: 3D-Renderings, Power of Ten Gardens, BUGA München 2005 (images courtesy

of Rainer Schmidt Landscape Architecture)

In my own practice I generally prefer the use of simple, informal 3D-models during the design process as tools that allow us to analyze, test, edit, and improve our spatial concepts efficiently in three dimensions – working from future users’ eye-level perspectives.

4 Combining Digital and Physical Models

Despite the incontestable benefits of 3D-models as design tools, both in the professional realm as well as in my teaching, I advocate a well-balanced combination of digital representations with time-tested conventional physical models that can be held, walked around, and touched. Both model types have their pros and cons. From my experience, especially clients and future open space users – for example, in public hearing settings or exhibitions – benefit from being able to interact directly and personally with a physical model while discussing aspects of a design. Most digital representations are nowadays still limited to a staged and non-interactive presentation type, while physical models allow for active layperson involvement (Fig 6).

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Fig. 6: Conventional physical models foster interactive participatory processes

5 Summary

Simple and abstract digital visualizations are an excellent medium to test spatial configurations and proportions of open spaces efficiently during the conceptual design phases of projects. They are particularly useful in representing the dynamic and changing elements that often distinguish landscape from built form. Three-dimensional computer models and renderings are not only means of representation but also design tools and should be used as such. Because many current software packages and presentation media do not yet allow for intuitive client or user participation during the design process, digital 3D-graphics should be supplemented with conventional physical models.