Mecanoo’s Weiwuying National Center for the Arts Opens in Taiwan

Dutch architects Mecanoo have designed the Weiwuying National Center for the Arts in Taiwan, which opened this weekend. The performing arts centre is Taiwan’s biggest cultural investment in a generation, covering a surface area of 35 acres (141,000 sqm) and is set in the 116-acre (470,000 sqm) subtropical park, making it the world’s largest performing arts centre under one roof.

The Centre is located in Kaohsiung, an international port city in southern Taiwan. Situated at the end of a 116-acre park that had previously been a military training base, the Dutch architecture firm Mecanoo designed the curved steel building to emulate a leafy canopy, inspired by the large banyan trees that grow on the site.

Mecanoo’s projects range from single houses to complete neighbourhoods and skyscrapers, cities and polders, schools, theatres and libraries, hotels. It’s museum designs also include Amsterdam’s Trust Theater, Spain’s Palace of Justice, and our very own Library of Birmingham.

Under the executive and artistic direction of Chien Wen-Pin, Weiwuying will become a flagship base for Taiwan’s internationally renowned contemporary dance and theatre companies. As well as orchestras of Western and Chinese music, Peking, Taiwanese and Western opera troupes, hand puppet companies, Oscar and Golden Lion-winning filmmakers, Booker-nominated authors and Mando-pop stars.