National Performing Arts Center

Design Concept

Inspired by the expansive banyan trees that remain on the former Weiwuying military base site, the design draws from their vast, interwoven canopies that offer shade and a sense of shelter. The center takes shape beneath a sweeping, undulating roof that unifies four major performance venues—an opera house, a concert hall, a playhouse, and a recital hall—encircling a central public space known as the Banyan Plaza. The result is the world’s largest single-roof performing arts center, where architecture, nature, and civic life converge.

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Each of the four venues within the center offers a distinct spatial and theatrical experience, accommodating a diverse range of performance styles.
The Opera House, the largest venue in the complex, features a computer-controlled stage and a hydraulic orchestra pit, supporting a wide spectrum of productions. It seats 2,236.
The Concert Hall, designed in a vineyard-style layout, houses Asia’s largest pipe organ with 9,085 pipes, and accommodates 1,981 guests.
The Playhouse blends a proscenium and thrust stage configuration, equipped with a computer-controlled stage platform system. It offers seating for 1,209.
The Recital Hall, conceived as a shoebox-style space, features adjustable acoustic walls and flexible sound insulation, with a capacity of 434.
An outdoor theater extends into the adjoining metropolitan park, offering a venue for open-air performances set within the natural landscape.

Though functionally independent, the four performance halls are interconnected through shared public spaces on the ground and mezzanine levels. These communal areas allow audiences to move fluidly between venues, while layers of technical infrastructure and support systems weave throughout, creating a richly interlaced spatial composition.

Distinctive Structure

Beneath the expansive roof lies the multifunctional Banyan Plaza, designed to evoke the dense shade of the original banyan trees on site and to nurture the vibrant civic life that has long flourished here. Surrounding the plaza, sweeping free-form walls crafted from 6mm-thick steel plates are uniquely shaped using shipbuilding techniques. Each panel is fully welded into continuous curved walls, with the weld seams deliberately left visible—an homage to Kaohsiung’s identity as both a historic port city and a hub of heavy industry and shipbuilding.

The four performance halls and a central circulation core each form independent cylindrical structures that collectively support a vast roof spanning approximately 35,000 square meters. The roof’s undulating form responds to the functional demands of the interior spaces—such as stage equipment towers and the concert hall dome. Crafted from a lattice of 6m by 6m circular steel tubes, this mesh-like framework shapes the free-form roof, significantly simplifying its complex structure while establishing a new benchmark for the lowest unit construction cost in performing arts architecture worldwide.