OMA′s Taipei Performing Arts Center “will inspire unimagined theatrical possibilities”

Designed by OMA, the huge Taipei Performing Arts Center will open in Summer 2022 and it will become the new headquarters for Taiwan’s numerous performing arts groups, embracing a variety of genres, as contemporary dance, opera, children’s theater, cutting-edge theater, puppet theater and musical theater. It will also serve as a laboratory for cross art-forms experimentations.

The project, situated in the lively Shilin District, has been led by Rem Koolhaas and David Gianotten in collaboration with local architecture firm Kris Yao | Artech and the engineering company Arup. The 59,000 sqm complex comprises three theaters: an 800-seat spherical Proscenium, a 1500-seat Grand Theater, and an 800-seat Multiform Theater – or ‘Blue Box’ – which is designed to host the most experimental performances. The Grand Theater and the Multiform Theater can be also coupled becoming a 2,300-seat ‘Super Theater’. In this context David Gianotten said ‘Taipei Performing Arts Center inspir[es] unimagined theatrical possibilities’.

‘Taipei has a unique kind of creative energy that extends to every aspect of life’, stated Koolhaas and the project, to dialogue with this characteristic, features a public loop that bring people – with or without a ticket – to walk through the building and see performances and technical spaces usually hidden to the audience.