Laureate Taipei Performing Arts Centre
29 January 2009
The team of OMA won the international design competition for the Taipei Performing Arts Centre. The design proposal, which shall be revealed in more detail in the coming days and weeks, is comprised of several performance spaces, including one 1 500-seat and two 800-seat theaters.
The OMA design is a very compact theatre building, with the stages and stage houses of the three theaters concentrated in the main cube. The stages and backstage areas are interlocked, keeping space for circulation and foyers where logical and useful. Each of the theaters has its own base form and character, and offers different degrees of variability.
The overall concept stresses the independent use of the three theaters, yet encourages theater makers to combine (parts of) them in multiple ways and at different scales. For instance, the backstage of the Grand Theatre can be connected to the Multifunction Theatre, but also to the understage of the Playhouse Theatre, forming new space-relationships. The result is a surprisingly simple and efficiently branched building.
The design complements and continues the rhythm of the night market in the socle of the cube, dovetailing its density by providing opportunities for in and outdoor theater and commerce in various forms.
dUCKS worked closely with the OMA teams in Rotterdam and Beijing on the development of the building concept and its intertwined theater technology in both rounds of the architectural competition.
