At the beginning of the 20th century, the Japanese colonial administration undertook a colossal railway project to transport coal mined in the surrounding mines to the ports of Keelung and Taipei. When the mines were paralyzed, tourism became the main economic asset of the region.
In this context, the New Taipei Municipality initiated a program that aims to connect old trails and abandoned industrial sites. This is where The Dark Line comes into play, a eco-historical route between Mudan and Sandaolingwhose project was carried out by the Catalan studio Michèle & Miquel.
The architects and landscapers Michèle Orliac and Miquel Batlle, who will participate in the next edition of the Buenos Aires International Architecture Biennial in October, won in 2018 the competition held by the Municipality to create a tourist trail in the section between Mudan and Sandiaoling. It includes two historic railway tunnels and a connection that was invented to replace a bridge washed away by water.
The passage of time produced throughout this through ecological, atmospheric, acoustic, chromatic and lighting variationswhich are the heart of the proposal.
“Our position was preserve the landscape postindustrial in its historical and ecological depth. That a structure that required such a considerable investment was abandoned to vegetation and bats, with its mouth full of silt and rocks, expresses the power of changing times,” the authors say.
Despite taking an attitude of respect in favor of pre-existing atmospheres, important interventions were necessary to be able to open that route to the publicand resolve the safety of the site against possible landslides or achieve a gentle slope without modifying the soil.
“We choose a unique material capable of making us forget its presencebut also to evoke the two great phenomena that have impacted the place during the last 100 years: the iron builds a new ‘railway’ and the spaces left between the bars allow us to see and give continuity to the powerful tropical nature action”, highlight the designers.
Nails 500 thousand bent bars They follow one another to “create a terrain that is more empty than full, which reveals through transparency, under our feet, the rocks and silt of the tunnels and the exuberant vegetation of the gorges,” they detail.
The parallel bars are inclined to draw railings, benches, bicycle racks, small amphitheaters. They also lean to draw protective vaults in the most fragile places against a possible collapse of the tunnel wall. In short, “a construction system adapted to the difficult geographical context and production conditions of Taiwan.”
Three kilometers of sensations
The route of the trail takes up the geometric properties of a railway track, with always tangential relationships. This allows the adoption of a modular pallet system produced in the workshop and then assembled on site.
The difficulty was installing these platforms without “touching” the existing rock and silt soil and water currents.
In the cliff sectors, the designers had to geometrically follow the irregularities of the wall to draw a single module in a circle arc. Thus, the assembly of modules with a very wide radius of curvature allowed them to create almost rectilinear frames.
In this way, the route follows the route as closely as possible. irregular and random profile of the topographywithout leaving a regulated route.
Upon entering the cavernous darkness of the Sandiaoling tunnel, a minimal artificial lighting bathes the base of the vault and the floor; and reveals beneath the platform the variations of the original soil: rocks, meandering infiltration water and colored silt.
The light source leaves the sectors where bat colonies are found in darkness. And it also gives way to the wet, shiny, multicolored surfaces of the limestone formations, covered in smoke residues.
between tunnels
At the end of that long underground gallery emerges a tall natural light wellopen against the sky, trace of the bed of an ancient torrent. The sun’s rays filter through the layers of foliage and, when coming into contact with the vapors exhaled from the tunnel, produce an unreal atmosphere of a fantastic story.
After this stop, the visitor enters the second tunnel, the Sanzhuazi, which leads into the void of the gorges at the end of a wide curve.
There, a water mirror It brings the luminosity of the opposite bank under the arch and recalls the emptiness left by the old bridge that has disappeared.
Fed by natural flows, this basin extends over the cliff, on a triangular ledge, pouring water into a waterfall.
From the inside, the The visitor’s silhouette is suspended between his reflection and the vegetal bottom of the other shore.
Further ahead, the trail passes through a walkway attached to the vertical wall of the gorges. At this point, the route expands towards an extensive balconygetting as close as possible to the sinuosities of the cliff.
In full light, the distant landscape is discovered again. In winter, it is characteristic misty sky which suggests a succession of uncertain reliefs. In summer, however, the violent luminosity defines everything.
“If in the tunnels we explore the depth of the ground and its darkness, here it is above the canopy of a lush vegetation that we walk, among the tallest trees, emerging under our feet,” the authors describe.