Core Pacific City

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Core Pacific City, also known as the Living Mall (Chinese: 京華城) is a shopping center in Taipei, Taiwan, and has a total floor space of 204,190 square meters. ^[1] Built in 2001, the structure is a complex of two buildings - an L-shaped building which contains specialty boutiques connected to a sphere which contains the Mira Department Store. The complex consists of 12 above-ground stories and 7 underground levels. The mall is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.^[2] As one of the first of several large-scale malls in Taiwan, Core Pacific's planners expected it to change local consumer behavior to Western-style one-stop shopping.^[3]

During the mall's development and construction, it was touted as the world's first truly 24 hour mall and Asia's first "city within a city" complex.^[4] Core Pacific's total 19 story height is attributed to Taiwan's extremely expensive land costs.^[5] The sphere, considered to be Core Pacific's most dominant and visible feature, is 11 stories tall and made of granite imported from Finland, while the L-shaped portion is made of granite from Spain.^[6] The mall's architects were the Jerde Partnership and Artech, Inc.^[7] Jerde won the 2002 Gold Nugget Special Award of Excellence at the Pacific Coast Builders Conference/Western Building Show for its effort.^[8] The engineering firm Arup was also recognized in 2002 for its work on the mall with a Structural Engineering Association of California Award for Excellence.^[9]

Before Core Pacific opened in 2001, its management had been fined by the Taipei city government for failing fire safety inspections. Further fines were levied when the mall opened to the public without actually first obtaining an operating license.^[10] In February 2002, a fire at the mall required the evacuation of 20,000 people. The fire was determined to be arson, and in July 2002 former Core Pacific official Lin Chang-cheng (林長成) was convicted of the crime along with two others, Wang Lin-kwun (王林坤) and Lin Ching-chi (林清吉). Losses were estimated at NT$12 million.^[11] The opening of Taipei 101's mall in 2003 was expected to affect the revenues of Core Pacific's tenants, although less severely than at other malls due to Core Pacific's lower price points.^[12] In 2004, the mall's management company was cited by Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission for unfair trade practices relating to a gift certificate promotion campaign.^[13]