Christie Chu
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Acclaimed Japanese architect Shigeru Ban has emerged victorious in an international competition to design the Tainan Museum of Fine Arts in Tainan City, Taiwan, reports Designboom. His design calls for a seemingly wide open and porous building set alongside a garden made up of plant-covered blocks dotted with large public art pieces.
The construction of the museum will serve to put southern Taiwan on the cultural map, boosting research and understanding of local fine art, history, and literature. The Tainan City Government is looking to create a space that integrates the historical and modern spaces of Tainan City to showcase its future as a cultural capital. The construction budget for the project has been set at about $59 million.
Ban, who this year was named the 37th recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, is well-known for his innovative and ecological designs that blend Japanese tradition with Western modernism, seen most recently in his expansion of the Aspen Art Museum (see “Colorado Climbers Collared After Ascent of Aspen Art Museum“). The winning design consists of tiered floors under a pentagon shaped roof, emphasizing the Japanese notion of a “universal floor,” one that blends the inside of a structure with the outside. A 350 seat auditorium and classrooms of varying sizes make plain the project’s emphasis on education, while a park will be used as an extension of the museum’s gallery space. Renderings of the outdoor sculpture garden show it populated with works by Jeff Koons, Barnett Newman, Alexander Calder, Yoshimoto Nara, Richard Serra, and other blue chip artists.
The estimated size of the museum and its galleries, as well as its tentative opening date, have yet to be announced.
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