Work on the new Taipei Performing Arts Centre, designed by architectural practice Office for Metropolitan Architecture (O.M.A.) is under way.
On February 16, the president of Taiwan, Ma Ying-jeou, along with the mayor of the City officially opened the building site of the centre for which the Dutch architectural office had won first prize in the international competition in 2009. Some members of OMA, including Rem Koolhaas, and the local partners of Artech Architects were present.
Koolhaas and his team's design for TPAC is revolutionary and spectacular, the project envisages three communicating theatres which can be used individually or in combination with the others. The main theatre has 1,500 seats while the other two both accommodate 800.
The volumes of the two smaller theatres come within a central cube, surrounded by an undulating glass surface, inside which the three stages communicate, creating a larger one.
The “cube” is positioned on a raised base, so that the area traditionally occupied by the nearby local market is not disturbed. Overall the structure will occupy a large 40,000 square metre space.
“The possibility of joining the environments favours the opportunity of undertaking new theatre experiments” explain the OMA designers. Furthermore, the general public, even those without a theatre ticket, are invited to enter the “cube” where they can observe the usually hidden parts of a theatre production.
The project should be completed in 2015 and the construction budget will be around 140 million euros.
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