The first source catches this project at the moment of selection: Rem Koolhaas’s OMA had won Taipei’s competition for a new performing arts center in 2009. Read beside a 2022 account of the completed building, it turns an architectural proposal into a long before-and-after story.
OMA’s finished complex in Shilin joins three separate theaters to a central cube. A spherical playhouse projects from one side, while the Grand Theater and Blue Box extend from others. The Grand Theater and Blue Box can also be joined into a larger performance space.
The architecture is not only a collection of auditoriums. The cube rises above a ground-level plaza, and a public route passes through production areas usually hidden from visitors, with views into the theaters. That route continues OMA’s original question: whether a theater can remain part of ordinary city life rather than retreat from it.
The setting strengthens that question. The center stands near Jiantan MRT Station and Shilin Night Market, where formal performance spaces meet one of Taipei’s busiest street environments. Together, the early competition report and the finished-building account preserve both ends of the distance between proposal and reality.
