The proclamation by METALOCUS after being the first in the world to publish the project "The Dark Line" values excellence in architecture at an international level thanks again to the contribution and recognition of the following authors:
Philippe Bonnin (FR),
Joan Roig (ESP),
Françoise Crémel (FR),
Ioanna Spannou (GR),
Éric Alonzo (FR),
Scott Hawken (AUS),
José Moreno y Raquel Altares (ESP),
José Juan Barba (ESP).
The Dark Line by Michèle & Miquel and dA VISION DESIGN. Photograph by LU Yu-Jui, Michèle & Miquel.
This year's proclamation is awarded to The Dark Line intervention, for demonstrating an extraordinary synthesis of qualities of innovation, talent, vision and commitment to the environment that becomes a solid and significant contribution of architecture to society and the environment. environment at a global level.
The selection follows the three fundamental criteria set out in the declaration of intent for the presentation of the METALOCUS 2023 Building of the Year. The Dark Line realizes, represents and contains the following:
One of the outstanding innovations of The Dark Line is its commitment to the natural and individuals, the overcoming of definitions from the last century, which led us to only sculptural visions from a Platonic vision, changing today and putting people in the centre of its realization. The Dark Line presents its "venustas" not as a game of volumes that contain space, but as a process of construction of places in which individuals interact with space and with other individuals, a delicate process of seams with the environment, hybridization with the environment.
"...going through a tunnel subject to possible landslides, installing a walkway on the ground, 'without touching it', building a complex structure on a vertical and unstable ground,... and all without cutting any trees."
Michele & Miquel.
Geometry. The Dark Line by Michèle & Miquel and dA VISION DESIGN.
The Dark Line has been built on the remains of a contradictory memory, on the vestiges of an infrastructure built in difficult times, facilities that tried to control coal extraction processes, in a mountainous area between Taipei and Ylan, the section of the route between Mudan and Sandiaoling, on the Pacific coast, east of Taiwan. On the trail of an old route and abandoned and forgotten facilities, the “firmitas” of the Dark Line do not represent a new imposition on the territory. Its realization, based on the ancient remains of this path of machines, is quite the opposite or much more, it is hybridizing, establishing sutures with the past and the present, dialoguing with the landscape, with the territory without imposing.
The exceptional contribution of the Dark Line and its “utilitas” as a model lies not only in generating a chain of places, a journey, and a path in which the centre of creation is people but also in what is more interesting and innovative: the project builds place by recovering the Taiwanese landscape. The old roads and tunnels cease to be "non-places" by making visible the extraordinary beauty of the surrounding nature, playing with the presence or absence of light, the movement of mist, and vegetation, a game of extraordinary relationships that presents us with a universal model on how to intervene and inhabit our environment from a small-large island in the Pacific.
Geometry. The Dark Line by Michèle & Miquel and dA VISION DESIGN.
"Industrial landscapes have an expiration date: the industry abandons the places with the same radicality with which they have been invested. Product of a precise technical-economic system, the infrastructures are emptied as soon as a more efficient system appears. Monumental physical traces remain, where flora and fauna, quick to detect faults, make their habitat.
It is now a hybrid environment in which traditional distinctions between nature and culture are blurred. We decided, from the beginning of the project, to keep the tunnel in all its historical thickness, as it is, without restoring it, and to show the transformation of the place since its abandonment, including the rocky and sandy soils accumulated by typhoons, the flow of water from infiltration, the lush vegetation that covers the monumental facades, and the trees that are found along the entire route.»
Michèle & Miquel.
The Dark Line is especially relevant, not only for its Firmitas, utilitas and venustas, but for its attitude, for how it approaches its implementation and its empathetic and kind capacity for the place, for the literal constructing of a porous, permeable proposal, which is attentive to those who use it and with the nature that surrounds it.
Sections. The Dark Line by Michèle & Miquel and dA VISION DESIGN.
After the premiere publication in May 2023 in METALOCUS of "The Dark Line", the project was collecting recognition from different countries, among which it is worth highlighting:
AFEX Award 2023 (FR), BEAU XVI Award (ESP), Landezine International Landscape Award 2023 (SVN), Arquin fad 2023 (ESP), IFLA ASIA PAC Excellence Award 2023 (SGP), Architettura LOVERS il Premio 2023 (ITA), INT. design Grand Prix du Design paysage & territoires 2023, (CAN), WLA Merit Award Winner 2023 (AUS), Taiwan Environment Lighting 2023, Building of the Year METALOCUS 2023 (ESP).
