BIG just completed the first holiday home at their green-roofed Hualien Wellness & Residential development in Taiwan. Designed to provide a health-conscious and productive community for seniors, the 1,000-square-meter house in the first building on the site features the project's trademark elements-jagged green roof, solar panels and floor-to-ceiling windows on both sides of the volume.

For the resort masterplan, a language of green landscape stripes create a mountain terrain of commercial and residential program that echo the natural mountains in distance. The stripes run east-west to frame the best views while also becoming an optimal shading system for Taiwan's hot and humid tropical climate. Low-angle, high-glare morning and evening sun is effortlessly blocked by the stripes while favorable north-south light is allowed into the units. Green roofs further mitigate heat gain and combined with the striping create a low energy masterplan.

Located on the eastern coast of Taiwan, which has recently seen a dramatic outflux of young people going to larger urban centers in search of better jobs, the project aims to bring older holiday-makers to the region and promote active vacations. Walking public paths planned for the site will meander through the complex and connect various public spaces such as observation points, performance stages, shops, restaurants and healthcare services.

Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) has created a number of other housing projects with green roofs, including a foliage-covered terraced block of apartments in Stockholm and a residential building in Copenhagen with sloping planted roofs.

Sources

DeZeen. BIG completes first home for mountain-shaped resort in Taiwan. 2015

Arch Daily. Hualien Residences: BIG's Most Mountainous Housing Project Yet? 2014