Taichung Green Museumbrary building by SANAA, Taiwan cultural development design, TcAM architecture images

Taichung Green Museumbrary Building by SANAA

23 + 17 July 2025

Design: SANAA

Location: Taichung, Taiwan

Taiwan’s Groundbreaking New Cultural Landmark Taichung Green Museumbrary,

Sanaa’s Largest Cultural Project To Date, Announces Opening Programme And Opening Date Of 13 December 2025

Pritzker Prize and 2025 RIBA Royal Gold Medal-winning Japanese architects SANAA’s largest cultural project to date, including 8 interconnecting volumes located in a 67-hectare green park
The spectacular architectural landmark is Taiwan’s first and only cultural complex to integrate a metropolitan art museum and a city’s central library
The new Taichung Art Museum to unveil TcAM Art Commissions by Taiwanese artist Michael Lin and Korean artist Haegue Yang
Taichung Art Museum’s opening exhibition ‘A Call of All Beings’ to include artists from 20 nations

Rendering of Taichung Green Museumbrary:

image courtesy of Cultural Affairs Bureau, Taichung City Government

Taichung Art Museum Building Design by SANAA Architects

Considered Taiwan’s most important cultural development of 2025, Taichung Green Museumbrary, located in Taiwan’s second largest city Taichung, is complete and will officially open to the public on 13 December 2025. The new international cultural destination will be Taiwan’s first venue to integrate a metropolitan art museum and the city’s central library – presenting a new model for arts institutions.

Covering a total floor area of 58,016 square metres, Taichung Green Museumbrary, home to the new Taichung Art Museum and the Taichung Public Library, was designed through an international collaboration between SANAA – the renowned Japanese architectural team led by 2010 Pritzker Prize laureates Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa – and Taiwan’s Ricky Liu & Associates Architects + Planners. The dual-venue complex is both SANAA’s first public building in Taiwan and their largest cultural project to date. The design reflects SANAA’s signature themes of transparency and fluidity, comprising eight interconnected volumes of varying sizes clad in glass and metal, which are enveloped by a pristine white expanded metal mesh curtain façade.

Japanese architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, SANAA:

photo © SANAA

With the announcement of Taichung Art Museum’s inaugural exhibition ‘A Call of All Beings: See you tomorrow, same time, same place’, curated by an international team from Taiwan, Romania/Korea and the United States, the completion of Taichung Green Museumbrary reflects a modern metropolis’ commitment to innovation and ambition to engage in international dialogues.

Rendering of the main entrance of Taichung Green Museumbrary, connecting Taichung Art Museum and Taichung Public Library:

image courtesy of Cultural Affairs Bureau, Taichung City Government

Architecture

Located in Taiwan’s second largest city of Taichung (population 2.8 million), Taichung Green Museumbrary occupies the northern edge of the 67-hectare Central Park within the 254-hectare Shuinan Trade and Economic Park, the site of a former military airport decommissioned in 2004. SANAA’s design embodies the ethos of the Taichung Green Museumbrary as ‘a library in a park and an art museum in a forest’, with spatial highlights including:

A boundless, inclusive space

The facility dissolves traditional boundaries between museums and libraries, creating an open, inclusive environment where exhibitions and reading converge. The Taichung Public Library is expected to house over 1,000,000 physical books and digital resources.

An outdoor rooftop garden

The outdoor rooftop Cultural Forest offers visitors an exceptional vantage point to enjoy the sweeping views of Central Park’s lush greenery and the city skyline. Conceived to celebrate the site’s distinctive Central Park setting, it encourages museum and library visitors to immerse themselves in this unique landscape from the rooftop garden.

Lightness and openness

The exterior features a dual-layer façade: an inner layer of high-performance low-emissivity glass or metal cladding, and an outer layer of aluminum expanded metal mesh. This silvery-white veil gives the building a sense of lightness and transparency. The building volume has been lifted to allow the park’s breeze and natural light to flow freely through, enhancing the building’s connection to its surroundings. The shaded plazas at ground level enable visitors to access the building from all directions – both from the neighbourhood and from the Central Park – creating an open and inviting public space.

Rendering of the Cultural Forest on the rooftop of Taichung Green Museumbrary:

image courtesy of Cultural Affairs Bureau, Taichung City Government

Taichung Art Museum

Yi-Hsin Lai, Director of Taichung Art Museum:

photo courtesy of the director, Yi-Hsin Lai

Taichung Art Museum is a brand new and the most important addition to Taiwan’s vibrant art scene following the founding of the Taipei Biennial (1998) and Taipei Dangdai art fair (2019). Led by the director Yi-Hsin Lai, the museum is committed to supporting local artistic practices while advancing international exhibitions and exchange initiatives that bridge Taiwan with the global art scene.

Rendering of the Atrium of Taichung Art Museum:

image courtesy of Cultural Affairs Bureau, Taichung City Government

TcAM Art Commission: Haegue Yang and Michael Lin

Taichung Art Museum responds to the visual permeability of architectural language with art commissions on a biennial basis. TcAM Art Commission not only resonates with the architecture, but also the museum’s identity, integrating with its ecological and cultural landscape. Haegue Yang (South Korea) and Michael Lin (Taiwan) are the two selected artists for the inaugural commission.

Yang’s installation, Liquid Votive – Tree Shade Triad (2025) in the museum’s soaring 27-metre atrium encircled by a spiral ramp will be her first large-scale commissioned piece in Taiwan. Inspired by the universal tradition of venerating old trees in South Korea, Taiwan, and beyond, her work pays homage to the local as well as transcultural spiritual beliefs in nature.

Based in Taipei and Brussels, Michael Lin has deep family roots in Taichung. His commissioned work, Processed (2025), orchestrates monumental painting installations that re-conceptualise and reconfigure public spaces using patterns and designs appropriated from traditional Taiwanese textiles.

Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA:

photo © SANAA

Opening Exhibition ‘A Call of All Beings: See you tomorrow, same time, same place ’

Co-curated by Taichung Art Museum’s curatorial team alongside Ling-Chih Chow (Taiwan), Alaina Claire Feldman (USA) and Anca Mihuleţ-Kim (Romania/South Korea), Taichung Art Museum’s opening exhibition ‘A Call of All Beings: See you tomorrow, same time, same place’ draws inspiration from the natural and urban landscape surrounding the museum. It interweaves the building’s architectural openness with diverse artistic perspectives spanning generations. The exhibition explores the symbiotic relationships between humanity and non-human beings, framed through a reflective engagement with Central Taiwan’s art history and local culture.

The exhibition brings together works from Taichung Art Museum’s collection, significant loans, and newly commissioned works by Taiwanese and international artists. Special commissions include pieces by Karolina Breguła (Poland), Soyoung Chung (South Korea), Yuya Suzuki (Japan) as well as Taiwanese artists including Hong-Kai Wang, Yin-Ju Chen, Chia-Wei Hsu, Yu Liu and Chia-En Jao.

Belgian artist Adrien Tirtiaux presents a large-scale, site-specific installation that extends vertically throughout the museum, symbolizing layered geological memory and the passage of time. South Korean artist Seunghyun Moon, drawing from his lived experience with cerebral palsy, investigates the interplay of space, time and memory through the body.

Also featured is a kite installation by Joan Jonas, inspired by Asian folk legends, alongside rarely seen late-period sculptures by Joseph Beuys, reflecting his lasting exploration of material transformation, folklore, and nature. Manuscripts and archives from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince provide a literary lens on imagination and reverence for life. Works by Greek artist Loukia Alavanou and Haitian artist Myrlande Constant will be shown in Taiwan for the first time.

Performative works by the Indigenous dance company TAI Body Theatre will be presented alongside video works by choreographer Su Wen-Chi’s contemporary dance company YiLab, and contributions from the Taichung-based international art magazine White Fungus. These are shown alongside works by veteran Taiwanese artists including Huo-Cheng Yeh, Chih-Chu Lin, Pu-Shih Lu, and Ching-Shuang Wang — illustrating how artists from different generations encapsulate the local landscape and spirit through unique artistic languages, and delineate the city’s art history from a contemporary perspective that opens novel, eclectic visions.

Yi-Hsin Lai, Director of Taichung Art Museum, said, “As a newly established contemporary art institution in Taiwan, the museum will serve not only as a platform for local and Taiwanese artists but also as a hub for dialogues between Taiwanese and global art communities. Our exhibition programme aspires to nurture open and cross-disciplinary perspectives that invite the public into new experiences of exploration and sensory immersion. Conversations and reflections on environmental concerns, cultural infrastructure and urban development are themes central to the Taichung Art Museum, as is our unique partnership with the Public Library.”

Jia-Jun Chen, Director of the Cultural Affairs Bureau of Taichung City Government, said, “The completion of Taichung Green Museumbrary is a milestone in the city’s sustained investment in culture. It is emblematic of the city’s forward-thinking cultural policy and commitment to innovation. We are grateful to Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA for gifting this extraordinarily welcoming architectural marvel to our city for all visitors from near and afar to enjoy.”

Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, Partners of SANAA, said, “We have always hoped to create an open building that many people can easily participate in. Whether it is the museum providing visual learning through art or the library offering education through literature, combining the two to create a new multifaceted learning space is what we believe to be one of the main characteristics of this building. We have carefully considered how to gently link the two entities together to create a place that connects learning and communication for people.”

SANAA

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Rendering of the Reading Area of Taichung Public Library:

image courtesy of Cultural Affairs Bureau, Taichung City Government

Taichung Green Museumbrary (TGM)

The Taichung Green Museumbrary (TGM) is situated in the northern part of the Taichung Central Park in central Taiwan. TGM is designed by Tokyo-based architectural firm SANAA, founded by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, in collaboration with Ricky Liu & Associates Architects + Planners from Taiwan. It is a cultural institution complex housing the Taichung Art Museum and the Taichung Public Library. TGM comprises eight interconnected architectural units of varying heights and sizes. The exterior is constructed employing glass panels, pre-painted galvanized steel sheets, and aluminium expanded metal meshes. The architects make full use of the material characteristics to create a sense of fluidity and visual transparency in the space.

Within this cultural landmark that integrates a museum and a library, TGM is dedicated to the dissemination of knowledge and the transmission of perception and art, together generating connections and possibilities within the city of Taichung. The architects’ vision encourages visitors to re-think their relationship to the environment and the city, fostering meaningful interactions among individuals.

Rendering of the Teen Reading Area of the Taichung Public Library:

image courtesy of Cultural Affairs Bureau, Taichung City Government

Taichung Art Museum – TcAM

Located within the Taichung Green Museumbrary, the Taichung Art Museum (TcAM) is a space that transcends boundaries and sparks imagination. Since its institutional launch in March 2024, TcAM has become more than just a place for art — it is part of a new cultural hub formed in collaboration with the Taichung Public Library, together shaping the Taichung Green Museumbrary.

Designed by the renowned SANAA architectural firm, led by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, the museum’s architectural language emphasizes transparency and fluidity. The design consists of eight interwoven architectural volumes, with the museum and library occupying separate structures, connected by staggered pathways that create a dynamic spatial experience. This interwoven design invites visitors to roam and explore, offering a new way to navigate the space. The high level of spatial transparency dissolves the boundaries between culture, art, and nature, shaping an open, cross-disciplinary environment where architecture, nature, and people meet — fostering new ideas and creating a participatory cultural space.

As a public art museum, TcAM is committed to serving as a platform for cross-disciplinary artistic exchange. Its core spirit is rooted in Taichung’s rich cultural heritage, drawing inspiration from the city’s historical and artistic legacy. TcAM explores and highlights the unique characteristics of Taichung’s art history, integrating urban life and public discourse to develop exhibitions, curatorial programs, and multidimensional experiences that transcend time, disciplines, and geography. Meanwhile, TcAM continues to strengthen its international connections, fostering open, diverse, and thought-provoking dialogues. Through art, the museum aims to introduce multiple perspectives, create new cultural value, and establish itself as a contemporary space for in-depth thinking and open dialogue.

SANAA Architects

Taichung Green Museumbrary, Taiwan images / information received 160725

Location: Taichung, Taiwan, eastern Asia.