Futuristic architectural space with large, angular structures and a modern courtyard. The scene is in monochrome, with tables and chairs scattered across the area, creating a minimalist and serene atmosphere.

Taipei Museum of Art

Taipei, Taiwan

2011

Client New Taipei City Government

Culture & Leisure

Much like many of the works it is designed to house, this Merit award winning proposal for the Taipei Museum of Art is a building whose simple, clear external form in fact contains a wealth of intrigue, discovery and complexity.

Abstract architectural image featuring large, smooth concrete structures with sharp angles. A small cluster of circular tables and chairs sits below, partially visible through the geometric overhangs, creating a contrast between the architectural elements.

The museum is defined as a constellation of ‘rooms’, each legible as autonomous buildings in their own right, and each housing key components of the museum’s programme. The constellation is arranged outwardly as a unified whole – a conventional monolithic squared shape – but inwardly as an organic and varied topography of fissure, niche, bulge, flexure and contortion thanks the gaps between each structure.

Seven minimalist black and white photos each show two small silhouetted figures standing beneath large, geometric architectural structures with dramatic contrasts of light and shadow.

These gaps, combined with a series of upper level loggia spaces, are the only interruptions to the external form of the building, defining to access routes into and through the museum – democratic, loose spaces – and allowing for views of the surrounding city.