‘Embrace the Maze’: Elevated Walkways and Suspended Steps Bring Fun and Thrills to Mighty New Taiwan Museum.

Navigating the recently inaugurated Taichung Art Museum in the heart of Taiwan feels like wandering through a conceptual maze. Created by the celebrated Japanese architecture firm Sanaa, the complex consists of eight deliberately askew buildings that seamlessly merge an art museum with a public library. Encased in shimmering, mesh-like silver walls, the interior boasts dramatically high roofs and curving walkways.

Beyond the breezy lobby—a space that defies categorization—visitors amble along walkways and inclines, suddenly transitioning in a library one moment and a top-tier art exhibition the next. A portal might guide one onto a overhead passage offering vistas from a rooftop garden, granting sweeping panoramas of Taichung’s Central Park, or into a cozy teenage reading nook. Staircases appear to float on building exteriors, and floor levels are deliberately disparate, serving each space’s unique function and atmosphere rather than imposing a rigid, uniform layout.

“It is ‘simple to lose your way within’,” notes Lan Yu-hua, an associate researcher at the museum, chuckling. But she maintains that’s a feature to celebrate: “We say that getting lost is good.”

This city-funded initiative stands as the most recent in a string of high-profile museums and performance venues unveiled across Taiwan over the past two decades.

Pritzker Laureates at Work

Led by 2010 Pritzker Prize laureates Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa—creators of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York and the Sydney Modern gallery—Sanaa partnered with the Taiwanese firm Ricky Liu & Associates Architects+Planners on the multi-year build. The Taichung city government’s simple directive was for an art museum and a library on a single site.

The end product has erased the lines between the two institutions. The design prompts one to slow down, imagining a day spent studying or creating in the library, broken up with leisurely walks through halls of art.

“We are extremely pleased that we are with the library under one roof, because I think that can truly attract another layer of audiences for us,” states Yi-Hsin Lai, the museum’s director.

Launch Shows with International Flair

The museum’s launch exhibitions feature specially created pieces by acclaimed South Korean artist Haegue Yang and Taiwanese artist Michael Lin. Yang’s immersive work offers an abstract interpretation on the banyan trees and fireflies ubiquitous in Taiwan and Korea. Suspended within the 27-meter-high central atrium, it blends her signature venetian blinds with lights and steel frames. At night, the radiant glow from her work shines through the exterior mesh from a kilometer away.

The larger opening exhibition, titled A Call of All Beings, is an eclectic but coherent mix of specially made and freshly collected art by artists from 20 countries. Organized by an international team, it places side-by-side master painters from mid-20th century Taiwan alongside postmodern video works. In a significant achievement, the curators also sourced original early sketches from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince and archival photographs of Helen Keller.

The exhibition highlights Taiwanese artists, particularly those from Taichung. There is also a particular effort on including artists with disabilities—a relevant initiative.

Elevating Taiwan’s Cultural Profile

For Taiwan’s art sector, this new museum represents a key moment to enhance the island’s profile in the global art scene and further “decentralize” cultural focus from the capital, Taipei. Taichung, the island’s second-largest city, is a brief commute from Taipei and is home to a respected Museum of Fine Arts and a expanding sector of private galleries. However, it has had difficulty to attract international art tourists.

“It’s quite active and flourishing now. We hope that in a few years Taichung can be an recognized Asian cultural destination,” expresses Director Lai.

Claudia Chen, chair of a major Taiwanese art association, describes the new museum as a potential “gamechanger” for the country, “shifting the focus from the north to south.”

“While Taichung and southern Taiwan have had many arts and cultural events in the past, none have reached the scale and importance of Taipei,” Chen notes.

Another arts foundation executive, Jenny Yeh, remarks that Sanaa’s involvement has drawn international attention and built upon Taiwan’s existing artistic momentum. “This will encourage more international visitors to explore beyond Taipei and experience a broader view of Taiwan’s cultural landscape. Overall, it will be a tremendous help to Taiwan’s visibility on the global stage.”

The museum welcomes the general public in mid-December, preparing for a primarily local audience, at least initially, alongside visiting international press and museum professionals.