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The administrative district of New Taipei City extends into the countryside far beyond the capital of Taiwan, embracing old towns and spectacular landscapes. Kris Yao | Artech won a competition to design an art museum on reclaimed land intended to draw visitors and stimulate the local economy. The program specified artists’ studios, shops, cafés and children’s classrooms in addition to archival storage of work created by local artists and galleries that would showcase contemporary art for a broad audience.
In their proposal, which was selected ahead of a design by Kengo Kuma, the architects took their cues from the picturesque streets of Yingge, a neighboring town that used to be the country’s leading center of ceramics production and has become a home for artists and artisans. “Every project is a brand-new experience and I need to feel the spirit of place”, says founding principal Kris Yao. “I take an intuitive rather than analytical approach, using very simple forms that conceal the complexities of each structure”.
The complex is located at the confluence of two rivers and is served by an extension of the Taipei metro. The site was formerly a waste dump, and the expense of clean up limited the footprint of the new buildings and mandated a stacked composition. A weathering steel footbridge from the metro station leads to a complex of brick steps, walkways and sculpture terraces bounded by richly textured concrete walls that ascend 10 m up a gentle slope. They enclose studios and commercial spaces with green roofs and serve as a podium for the steel-framed museum block, which is rotated
37 degrees and looms high above like a castle in a feudal town.
The contrast of materiality is dramatic. The above-ground block is dematerialized by raising it on slender columns and cladding the walls with segmented aluminum panels in three colors. A linear screen of sandblasted aluminum tubes of...
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