Shigeru Ban Wins Tainan Museum of Fine Arts Design Competition

John Hill

15. September 2014

West green. All images courtesy of Shigeru Ban Architects

Shigeru Ban Architects has been named the first prize winner in Tainan city government's international design competition for a new fine arts museum aimed at promoting the development of the Taiwanese city’s fine arts culture and industry.

According to the competition website, the project's intends "to provide professional aesthetic exhibition facilities and supreme cultural environments in order to create a developing platform for local culture and hoping to drive the researches on arts, literature and history as well as the development of future arts in Tainan." Shigeru Ban's winning design takes the museum functions and places them in boxes stacked asymmetrically underneath a large pyramidal roof. The roof, supported by diagonal columns, filters daylight to the spaces above and between the boxes. Tiered green space extends the design beyond the footprint of the distinctive roof.