The Taichung Green Museumbrary, designed by Pritzker prize-winning Japanese architecture practice SANAA, has opened in Taichung, Taiwan, combining a metropolitan art museum and library to “bring together art, knowledge and nature”. This landmark project, SANAA’s largest to date, is a collaboration with Taiwan’s Ricky Liu & Associates Architects + Planners.
The complex comprises eight interconnected structures spanning 58,016 square meters, clad in high-performance low-emissivity glass or metal cladding, and enveloped in an aluminium expanded metal mesh curtain façade. The library holds 460,000 physical books, with 40,000 art books on the fifth floor, connected to the museum via the ‘culture forest’ roof.
Yi-Hsin Lai, Director, Taichung Art Museum, says, “This integrated design reflects the museum and library’s vision of learning as a shared, living practice.” Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, Partners, SANAA, add, “We have always hoped to create an open building that many people can easily participate in… combining the two to create a new multifaceted learning space is what we believe to be one of the main characteristics of this building.”
The Taichung Green Museumbrary is located in Taichung’s 67-hectare Central Park, within a decommissioned military airport, and aims to inspire creativity and imagination by integrating art, culture, and environment.
