The new Taipei Performing Arts Center by OMA has opened to the public in the city’s Shilin Night Market. Led by Rem Koolhaas and David Gianotten, the project comprises three theaters: a spherical 800-seat Globe Playhouse, a 1,500-seat Grand Theater, and an 800-seat Blue Box, connected to a central cube. 

The cube houses the stages, backstages, and support spaces of the theaters, which allows the Grand Theater and the Blue Box to come together to form a Super Theater. 

The Globe features a unique proscenium that supports experimentation with stage framing. The opaque façades of the theaters juxtapose the animated and illuminated central cube that is clad in corrugated glass. 

A landscaped plaza sits beneath the central cube, which is lifted off the ground to accommodate the space. The Center welcomes the public through this area, in addition to a Public Loop that runs through the structure. Here, portal windows open to views inside the theaters, exposing spaces that are typically hidden. 

“When we first visited Taipei for the competition, we felt it was a city with an appetite for experiment,” Koolhaas commented on the origins of their design. “This building is a response to that discovery. We put three traditional theaters together in a way that offers theater makers completely new opportunities to conceive spectacles and performances.”

“TPAC presents to the citizens of Taipei a peculiar yet familiar place,” added collaborating architect Kris Yao of KRIS YAO | ARTECH. “In many ways, it is new, foreign and extraordinary; but at the same time, it is friendly, intimate and amicable. It fits perfectly into the eccentric characteristics of Taipei, and people love it. It is a true public building in its fullest sense.”