National Taichung Theater Introduction
Taichung National Theater features a avant-garde design based on the concept of a "Sound Cave," incorporating unique designs such as curved walls, holes, and tubular structures. The entire building is completely free of support beams, and no wall surface is at a 90-degree angle, defying conventional architectural concepts. After years of construction, a theater that coexists with people and nature is about to be born in Taichung. The rounded curves quietly nurture people’s expectations; the glass curtain reflects the blue sky, while the surrounding green spaces and flowing water create an urban paradise. The "Teapot" opera house’s facade resembles a curved wine vessel, where audiences can indulge in the splendor of performances, marveling at the endless possibilities of art. The facade is adorned with multiple cylindrical windows, and at night, the lighting casts an elegant and warm glow. This venue is a cradle for performing arts, a place for relaxation and acquiring new knowledge, and a starting point for renewing cultural life in central Taiwan. This is the Taichung National Theater. Beautiful things require ample preparation, especially a venue that internalizes art and culture into life. In 1992, the Education Department of the Taiwan Provincial Government planned the "National Taichung Music Arts Center," which was later changed to the "National Concert Hall," aimed at building an internationally standard performing arts center for Taiwan. After careful revisions of the venue's scale and name, in 2005, the construction of the "Taichung Metropolitan Opera House" was officially approved by the Executive Yuan's Council for Cultural Affairs (now the Ministry of Culture). With the construction project confirmed, the decision for the venue's architecture was made through an international design competition involving building teams from Taiwan, Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and other countries (32 architects) in two phases. Ultimately, the Japanese architect Toyo Ito emerged as the winner. With a clear architectural outline established, and long-term preparations already gathering sufficient momentum, the opera house set the operational direction for Taiwan's international venues. From the initial design to the completion of the building, the opera house has undergone the refinement of time and stringent tests. During the competition phase, Toyo Ito adopted an avant-garde design perspective, challenging existing thought patterns and pre-conceiving the building's outline, then embedding the stage within the curved walls based on the performance characteristics. The second phase focused on spatial efficiency, examining feasible design structures and innovatively connecting the main theater with the medium theater's foyer. Finally, based on the internal visual and auditory experiences of the opera house, circulation paths were fine-tuned, returning to the interaction between "humans" and space, emphasizing the artistic energy resonating within the "Sound Cave." The laughter, sorrow, and emotions that performing arts aim to present are thus amplified and enhanced. The Taichung National Theater has a total of 58 curved walls, each consisting of 1,372 small elements that are custom-made and cannot be mass-produced, constituting a monumental engineering project requiring meticulous calculations. Due to the extreme difficulty of constructing the Taichung National Theater, it has been dubbed the "world's hardest building to construct" within the architectural community, and the "curved wall" architectural method has even received a global patent certification. The internal space of the Taichung National Theater includes a large theater (2,007 seats), a medium theater (794 seats), a small venue (200 seats), as well as underground parking and related public spaces, with the landscape design surrounding the building also integrated with the concept of the Sound Cave. Inside the opera house, all 2,014 seats can experience the same auditory feast without any visual obstruction, ensuring that every seat has a clear view of the stage. Spaces resembling treehouses or caves do not take people back to the past but rather use modern technology and materials to liberate the hard, cold environment, transforming the rigid lines of the urban landscape into a soft space full of vitality. The flowing water and open-air gardens surrounding the venue break the binary distinction between stage and audience, indoors and outdoors, rekindling modern people's fading sensitivity to the environment and creating more opportunities for dialogue between people, architecture, and art. The "greatness" of architecture does not lie in the amount of steel, concrete, and glass used to construct a giant outline. In the past, people would pursue the tallest and most magnificent buildings at all costs, striving to prove humanity's triumph over nature; today, however, the focus is on finding the principles of coexisting with nature and the environment, returning to the essence of life—about the feelings of "humans." Everyone actually yearns to tell stories, listen to melodies, move their bodies with the rhythm of dance, and appreciate the unparalleled beauty of traditional arts; these are the elements that the Taichung National Theater takes pride in as its "greatness." Co-existing with nature, the fluid spaces gently embrace cultural and artistic endeavors. With curved walls resembling bones and transparent glass curtains, sunlight naturally spills in, and the wind can easily flow; at night, these openings radiate warm glows, giving birth to the opera house's breath and life. Additionally, the Taichung National Theater features a green park, and even the park's drainage system extends into the building, breaking the boundaries between indoors and outdoors.
