Updated by Paul Keskeys, September 2, 2016
Back in 2009, OMA beat out 135 entries from 24 countries in a fierce competition to design a new theater in Taiwan. Now, its design for the Taipei Performing Arts Center is approaching completion, and new photographs reveal how its outlandish form creates a provocative dialogue with its surrounding urban context.
Rem Koolhaas has long been a staunch advocate of “program-led” architectural design — an extreme, almost perverse cheerleader for Louis Sullivan’s oft-regurgitated architectural proverb, “Form ever follows function.” Here, he has taken that rationale to its monstrous conclusion, offering a structure with the most unashamedly industrial aesthetics: This truly is a machine for theater, driven not only by the current program for performance art, but also the potential for future, unimagined uses of theatrical space.
Left: OMA’s original rendering; right: the construction site with scaffolding steadily being removed; photograph © OMA by Chris Stowers
Section cuts reveal the building’s inner complexities; drawings © OMA.
OMA’s concept originates in the desire to break free from the accepted conventions for concert hall design, which typically have a fixed plan with a “front” and “back” and thereby negate choreographers with more creative ideas that require unconventional layouts. The firm asks pertinent questions on the subject: “Why have the most exciting theatrical events of the past 100 years taken place outside the spaces formally designed for them? Can architecture transcend its own dirty secret, the inevitability of imposing limits on what is possible?”
The firm’s solution is an incredibly compact building with three theaters “plugged in” to the sides of the main volume: the Proscenium Playhouse, which resembles “a suspended planet docking with the cube,” the Grand Theater, a tapered variation on the conventional shoebox layout and finally the Multiform Theater, a flexible space for “the most experimental performances.”
© Chris Stowers/PANOS
The building constitutes a startling new addition to Taipei’s urban landscape; photograph © OMA by Chris Stowers.
The first of these theaters — the suspended sphere, akin to a wrecking ball caught in the act of demolition — has divided opinion amongst architectural critics and the public alike since the conceptual renderings were revealed. Indeed, its form has churned up some fairly antagonistic sentiments, with its overblown external experience and rambunctious relationship with the surrounding city. As one commenter on Dezeen so eloquently put it, “Oh great: yet another building that looks like something bad has happened.”
However, its status as a new urban landmark is indisputable. The metallic orb, now revealed as scaffolding was recently peeled away, contrasts with the visual chaos of multicolored signs that populates the adjacent shopping streets. The dramatic intervention brings to mind a spacecraft, newly docked within the city like something straight out of Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming movie “Arrival.”
From top to bottom: the Grand Theater, the Multiform Theater and — formed by removing walls between the two — the Super Theater; renderings © OMA
Inside, recognized design conventions of the theater typology are upended in multiple ways. With the aid of movable walls and flexible seating arrangements, the Grand and Multiform halls can merge into the aptly named “Super Theater,” which allows a huge audience to surround a stage up to 100 meters (330 feet) long. This ability to transform space according to program — harking back to the ideals of Japanese Metabolism — raises the proposal to another level, legitimizing the factory-like aesthetic in the process.
© Chris Stowers/PANOS
The building is set to open in June 2017; photograph © OMA by Chris Stowers.
OMA’s uncompromising approach to form and appearance — deliberately flouting the recent uprising of parametric skins encasing public buildings proliferated by the likes of Zaha Hadid Architects, COOP HIMMELB(L)AU and Frank Gehry — results in an aesthetic assault on the eyes. This building is a truly grotesque manifestation of OMA’s ideals, but while it is far from pretty, its responsiveness to present and future programmatic needs may turn out to be a theatrical masterstroke.
Yours theatrically,
The Angry Architect
Liked this article? Check out the Angry Architect’s previous reviews of GDS Architects’ Tower Infinity and Jean Nouvel’s Louvre – Abu Dhabi.