Kaohsiung Pop Music Center, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

The twin poles of individual and collective life are everywhere present in pop music. From headphones to concerts, from musicians to the music industry, from downloaded songs to global distribution, pop music produces an endlessly changing dynamic across micro and macro scales. Its reverberations move nimbly among performers, audiences, and economies.

Our proposal uses circular buildings to form program and public space that slips into, out of, over, and under adjacent spaces. Circles don’t abut. They ricochet off of, and through, one another. They overlap. They yield. They conquer. They encompass. They divide. They aggregate. They lock. They loosen.

The city itself slides from land to water and back again. Functions combine with other functions. Routes cross. Views glance off of the constantly receding contours of the buildings’ profiles. The spaces between these cylinders appear and disappear as now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t voids, paths, activities, plazas, and gardens.

The circle asserts geometric confidence along its arc while simultaneously generating myriad possibilities inside and outside that same arc. It leaves no doubt about architecture’s identity, even as its encounters with other similar geometries create unexpected outcomes in their collective wake.