From the start of the National Palace Museum Southern Branch project, one of our main goals is to create a landmark of international appeal on the boundless flat landscape of the Chianan Prairie. Antoine Predock responded to the local Chiayi landscape in his unique way, presenting an immensely charismatic landmark building that conveys a sense of timelessness. The rich Asian references within, closely correspond to the thematic axis of the National Palace Museum Southern Branch's positioning.

From a museum's viewpoint, Antoine Predock's design possesses a flexible circulation where visitors move freely among the exhibition halls, creating a rich and multi-faceted experience. The design of the museum grounds is also highly unrestrained, allowing the museum to relate with the people easily, and also provide a focus for local life.

In Antoine Predock's design, we see integration between architectural space and the environment, creating a delicate symbiotic relationship. It reflects the National Palace Museum Southern Branch's interpretation of Asian cultural diversity and exchange. We believe the undergoing museum planning and the exhibition curation by the National Palace Museum can be best realized through the architectural design of Antoine Predock.

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Amongst the extensive discussions, three design proposals, projects of Taiwan's Kris Yao, Swiss architect Valerio Olgiati and Kengo Kuma from Japan addressed the issues or images of Asia. Kris Yao employed the image of “Chinese Garden”, Olgiati presented the image of a Buddhist “pagoda”, and Kuma expressed with the arabesque pattern to reflect Asia's formal language. The other three projects perceived with entirely differently. Some are de-constructive and symbolic and others used rich spatial organization to achieve the goal. After a rigorous discussion, everyone finally agreed upon US architect Antoine Predock's work. The reason behind is that from the perspectives of architectural form, interior spatial quality and functions of the museum, they are better resolved.

I personally favored Kris Yao's "Chinese Garden" or the “Southern Garden” image as well. After the deliberation by the jury, the US architect Antoine Predock was awarded the first prize. When listening to Mr. Antoine Predock's presentation, we found that he is very passionate, sincere and is fascinated with Asian culture. I believe there are still consequent efforts to follow; yet all will result in an excellent museum eventually.

We've seen 6 very interesting projects here, each of them taking a look at the National Palace Museum not only today but for the future, each of them wrestling with what makes a distinctively Asian museum, and I think there are some extraordinary results. In fact I think that the winning entry is a very very interesting fusion of many ideas about Asian culture, many ideas about what a museum ought to be. It will produce some spaces that are distinctively Taiwanese; they're made from the place, made from the materials of the museum. I think we have a wonderful winning entry on this scheme. But we also have several others that were quite exceptional. I think the Daniel Libeskind Studio's scheme was an amazing vision about the future. I think the Artech's scheme was a very Asian idea of a void being the center if this, rather than a building being at the center of this. So we've wrestled a lot with the question of what makes a very good museum, what makes a distinctive sense of place, what will draw people to this museum from a distance, and what will contribute to the development of the Chiayi area, which is part of the reason why this development is being created.

Museums are fascinating organizations, very very complex. They perform many functions, and have to provide for those functions, and for that reason architectural competitions are very important and fascinating projects in themselves. We have got a very complex brief for the new National Palace Museum Southern Branch and every part of that brief in some way or the other have got to be fulfilled. When we received the entries and look over them, we have to make sure of course that everything we want is provided within those presentations. Museums in a sense are like little cities, everything goes on within them, there are things to see, there are places to visit, there are cafes, there are restaurants, public lavatories, all these things have to be provided for, and so you've got a very complex organization. But I as a former Museum Director, am particularly interested to make sure that the main, the core function of museums is attended to, and that core function is of course the presentation of the collections for the public who visit the museums. So I always look to see whether the galleries are well provided for, whether there is a logic about the ways in which you can pass through the museum and you can begin to comprehend what those collections of objects add up to, because ultimately what one is doing, is trying to allow a story to emerge by seeing the objects, seeing how they relate to each other, seeing how they evolve with time, seeing how innovation makes a difference to the way in which people in the past have lived and led their lives.

Now the interests that we've got for this competition are very varied in nature. There are some very simple and straightforward organizations, there are some very complex ones, some are low, some are high, some make very strong architectural points, so are more monumental in style. All these obviously have to be taken into account, but as I said within the context of seeing whether in fact the prime, the primary function of the museum is attended to, the winning entry, which we after a great deal of discussion and thought, decided to choose, I think fulfills these requirements extremely well. It's a really monumental building, it'll be a landmark building, one of the most important new museum buildings to be built in the last few years, certainly very very important for Asia itself, because the building will not simply present the Chinese collection of the National Palace Museum, which is one of the greatest collections of course in the world, but it also tries to spread it out to broader understanding, and through the Museum itself, the Museum building, that can help, that can work with collection to provide the broadening effect, the educational effect, which I think we are all seeking. So as a result of this competition, I am extremely happy, we've got I think an inspirational idea from the designer, the museum of course is not simply a nice object in itself, it has to work with the landscape. I think the designer who has provided the winning entry understands very well exactly what this all means, and I look forward very much over the next few years to seeing this wonderful new museum emerge.

I think what the result of this competition is, is the possibility that Taiwan will see the emergence of a magic mountain out of what were once the flat sugarcane fields. It will be a place that will celebrate the heritage of Taiwanese culture and all of Asian culture, but also transform that heritage into a new kind of place, a place that is open to cultural representations of the future.

The winner of this competition is in some ways a very traditional building, it's a series of large spaces for exhibitions, but its image will be quite radical, with a large glass crystal in the middle of the building. The architect however, believes that this crystal is not just something that is radical and new, but has a direct relationship to the mountains of Taiwan, here transformed through technology, and turned into a gathering place where people will be walking underneath on the way through the site, because you can walk through without entering the building. People will be walking through this big mountain, this big crystalline space as they go from gallery to gallery, and they will also be rising up to the top to look out over this newly developed site. It really is a building that offers a whole variety of different experiences, all the way from appearing like an ancient fortress when one approaches it from the outside, to a very dark and shaded space when one enters, to entering this great crystal mountain that will be a liberating space as it soars up above you, into the very dark spaces of the galleries where you will be able to focus in on the small objects.

It's a building that comes out of the architect's many travels through Asia. He is looking at all of the landscapes and all of the arts of Asia. He is following the Silk Route; he is drawing in all of these different places. I've sat with him in places like Seoul, Korea, as he's looked at the buildings and drawn them, and in drawing, drawn out the essence of what these buildings are all about, and he has built on these experiences, on his deep love and understanding of the land and of landscape to create this monumental and grand structure. It will be deeply rooted in this place, both the literal space and the larger place of Taiwan, and the even larger place of Asia, but in being so rooted, it will also have the possibility of opening up vistas into the future and into a further space, a space beyond the mountains and the oceans you can see from the top of this building, so I think it will be a spectacular addition to the culture and the landscape of Taiwan.

This competition has produced a very diverse range of projects and this diversity has been explored in many ways by the architects. What is particularly interesting is that we see how many different approaches there are for housing a collection of this sort. In the project by Valerio Olgiati, what is quite important is the way in which the form of the building is addressing issues of distortion, in relation to the development of the structure, and works with two pools which become an important element of the visitors' experience of the landscape. Also the vertical dimension of this project is something that is quite critical in terms of establishing a monument on that site, and will give the project a great degree of visibility.

In terms of the project by the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, there is a very lightweight structure on the outside of the building, or at least it appears to be light because of the actual structure will be made of concrete, but it's a filigree structure that creates a kind of tracery around it, and the building is really at one with the landscape. This was an important part of the synthetic relationship between nature and architecture for this architect, and in fact the landscape also comes to the heart of the project. One of the things that this project didn't do as well as the issue of tracery was really in addressing the manner in which the galleries themselves were developed.

In another project by Artech, which is a practice from Taiwan, the project is in many respects sunken into the landscape. Its almost like a bird sanctuary with only very few pieces reappearing from the landscape, and the whole scheme is organized around the pool and this is a very interesting and attractive arrangement, but at the same time, it makes the appearance of the building slightly invisible, but still the connections very incredibly interesting. I think that the jury found the arrangement of the galleries as an area that probably needed more attention, but the treatment of the Chinese garden as something that was a very attractive part of the project.

In the scheme by the Dutch practice MVRDV, we have a very strong iconic image. A platform is almost suspended, resting on 3 points, on 3 hills and these hills have various functions within them, and the museum itself is treated much more as a universal space that can then be adapted in many different ways. This on the one hand opens up many different possibilities because it creates a variety of different routes, at the same time it, in this particular context, it raises certain concerns in terms of the degree to which, the views to the site, the importance of this location, is also something that is appreciated by the visitor.

In the Daniel Libeskind Studio scheme, there are many many important large scale spaces that are created and I think the central feature of this project is the dramatic waterfall upon the entry of the scheme. It's a signature Libeskind building and would be an important source of attraction. I think that for some of the members of the jury probably the relationship to the outside and the landscape was maybe something we would have liked to have seen more attention given to it.

The winning scheme by the American practice Antoine Predock, both addresses the question of the monumentality of the scheme as well as really bringing the landscape into the heart of the project. One of the important elements is the open court where there is an almost mountain-like structure that is there made of glass and within that there is another series of structures that establish very interesting short route connections to the various levels of the building. Predock is a master of detail and process and this project promises to be a very interesting collaboration between the clients, the Museum Director, and really a truly significant museum of the 21st century.

What I think, however, has been interesting really is the overall quality of all the six short-listed projects, which has brought so much focus and attention during a very short period of time, and that's something that I think is really important to appreciate and to continue developing specially for public projects, because its one of the certain ways of getting quality for projects of this caliber.