Taipei Performing Arts Center / OMA

Taipei Performing Arts Center / OMA - Exterior Photography, FacadeTaipei Performing Arts Center / OMA - Exterior Photography, CityscapeTaipei Performing Arts Center / OMA - Exterior PhotographyTaipei Performing Arts Center / OMA - Exterior Photography, Facade, GardenTaipei Performing Arts Center / OMA - More Images+ 31

Shilin District, Taiwan
  • Partners In Charge: Rem Koolhaas, David Gianotten
  • Project Director: Chiaju Lin
  • Associates: Paolo Caracini, Inge Goudsmit, Daan Ooievaar
  • Design Development (2009 2013) Project Architects: Ibrahim Elhayawam, Adam Frampton, Yannis Chan, Hin-Yeung Cheung, Jim Dodson, Inge Goudsmit, Alasdair Graham, Vincent Kersten, Chiaju Lin, Vivien Liu, Kai Sun Luk, Kevin Mak, Slobodan Radoman, Roberto Requejo, Saul Smeding, Elaine Tsui, Viviano Villarreal-Buerón, Casey Wang, Leonie Wenz
  • City: Shilin District
  • Country: Taiwan
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Taipei Performing Arts Center / OMA - Exterior Photography, Cityscape
© OMA by Chris Stowers

Text description provided by the architects. An ancient art form for civic participation, theater has evolved into the modern world as a vocation of the culturally refined, with its significance in daily life diminished. Theater space is valued for its potency for formal cultural productions, rather than its power to include and divert, and to be instantaneous. Contemporary performance theaters increasingly become standardized: a combination of two different- sized auditoria and a black box, with conservative internal operation principles for authentic work. Can a public theater still be inclusive, accommodating the classic and the serendipitous, the highbrow and the masses, the artistic and the social—a place for the creative life of all?

Taipei Performing Arts Center / OMA - Exterior Photography, Facade
© OMA by Chris Stowers

Located at Taipei’s Shilin Night Market marked by its vibrant street culture, Taipei Performing Arts Center is architecture in limbo: specific yet flexible, undisrupted yet public, iconic without being conceived as such. Three theaters plugged into a central cube allow performing spaces to be coupled for new theatrical possibilities. The cube is lifted off the ground for a Public Loop to extend the street life of Taipei into the theater. New internal possibilities and connections of the theater generate different relationships between producers, spectators, and the public, also a critical mass that works as a fresh, intelligent icon.

Taipei Performing Arts Center / OMA - Exterior Photography, Cityscape
© OMA by Chris Stowers
Taipei Performing Arts Center / OMA - Exterior Photography
© OMA by Chris Stowers

The central cube consolidates the stages, back stages, support spaces of the three theaters, and the public spaces for spectators into a single and efficient whole. The theaters can be modified or merged for unsuspected scenarios and uses. The spherical 800-seat Globe Playhouse, with an inner and an outer shell, resembles a planet docking against the cube. Intersection between the inner shell and the cube forms a unique proscenium for experimentation with stage framing. Between the two layers of shells is the circulation space that brings visitors to the auditorium. The Grand Theater, slightly asymmetrical in shape and defying the standard shoebox design, is a 1500-seat theater space for different performing arts genres. Opposite to it and on the same level is the 800-seat Blue Box for the most experimental performances. When coupled, the two theaters become the Super Theater—a massive space with factory quality that can accommodate productions that are otherwise only possible in found spaces. New possibilities of theater configurations and stage settings inspire productions in unimagined and spontaneous forms.

Taipei Performing Arts Center / OMA - Exterior Photography, Chair, Windows
© OMA by Chris Stowers
Taipei Performing Arts Center / OMA - Interior Photography, Chair
© OMA by Chris Stowers
Taipei Performing Arts Center / OMA - Image 32 of 36
Courtesy of OMA
Taipei Performing Arts Center / OMA - Image 31 of 36
Courtesy of OMA
Taipei Performing Arts Center / OMA - Interior Photography, Kitchen, Stairs, Beam, Steel
© Shephotoerd Co. Photography for OMA

The general public—with or without a ticket—is invited into the theater through a Public Loop, which runs through the theater’s infrastructure and spaces of production that are typically hidden. Portal windows along the Public Loop allow visitors to look at the performances inside and technical spaces in between the theaters.

Taipei Performing Arts Center / OMA - Interior Photography
© Shephotoerd Co. Photography for OMA
Taipei Performing Arts Center / OMA - Interior Photography
© OMA by Chris Stowers

Different than typical performance centers that have a front and a back side, Taipei Performing Arts Center has multiple faces defined by the theaters protruding above ground. With opaque facades, these theaters appear as mysterious elements against the animated and illuminated central cube clad in corrugated glass. A landscaped plaza beneath the compact theater is an additional stage for the public to gather, in this dense and vibrant part of Taipei. 

Taipei Performing Arts Center / OMA - Exterior Photography, Facade, Handrail
© Shephotoerd Co. Photography for OMA

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Project location

Address:No. 1號, Jiantan Rd, Shilin District, Taipei City, Taiwan 111

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Location to be used only as a reference. It could indicate city/country but not exact address.
About this office
Cite: "Taipei Performing Arts Center / OMA" 13 May 2022. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/981894/taipei-performing-arts-center-oma> ISSN 0719-8884

© OMA by Chris Stowers

台北表演艺术中心 / OMA

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