Manhattan-based architects Reiser + Umemoto announced that the firm has won an international competition to design Asia’s first performance complex devoted to pop music.

Created in collaboration with global engineering practice Arup Associates, the winning design for the Taipei Pop Music Center in Taipei, Taiwan sets a new standard for performing arts centres everywhere, combing multiple venues and novel design solutions to create an immersive pop music experience.

The program for the Center comprises an indoor multi-balcony theatre accommodating 3,000- to 6,000-person audiences in seated and standing formats, an outdoor performing space with 15,000 standing seats, a Hall of Fame museum, a digital music and media library, medium and small indoor exhibition and performing live houses, music industry offices and communities and incubation space.

In addition to the main auditorium and two large ‘live houses’, the Reiser + Umemoto design includes a mobile theatre, commonly referred to as the Robot Theatre. The Robot Theatre’s tracks run from the amphitheatre to the Hall of Fame, and it makes tops at various performance spaces of different types along its journey. Rounding out the $3.5-billion Center are features ranging from a hidden “Transfomer” theatre to fully landscaped grounds surrounding the complex, with state of the art technology in every detail—pitch-perfect acoustics, eco-friendly heating and cooling, and more.
The project brings together Arup’s integrated theatre and acoustics team with the skills of Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto, with further collaboration from renowned local architecture firm Fei and Cheng. The Taipei Music Center follows close on the heels of Reiser + Umemoto's recently competed O-14 tower project in Dubai, and it shows the firm at its most innovative, re-imagining the concept of a live music center to meet the challenges and opportunities of Asian pop music and digital media in the 21st century. More than just the world’s first pop music centre, it will be a mecca for Taiwanese and Asian youth culture.

About Reiser + Umemoto
Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto have practiced in New York City as Reiser + Umemoto, RUR Architecture P.C. since 1986. Jesse Reiser is currently an Associate Professor of Architecture at Princeton University. Nanako Umemoto is currently a Visiting Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and leads a yearly design workshop at Hong Kong University. Reiser + Umemoto, RUR Architecture P.C., an internationally recognized architectural firm, has built projects at a wide range of scales: from furniture design, to residential and commercial structures, up to the scale of landscape design and infrastructure. The firm was awarded the Chrysler Award for Excellence in Design in 1999, the Academy Award in Architecture by the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2000, and in May 2008, Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto were awarded the Presidential Citation from President George Campbell of the Cooper Union for outstanding practical and theoretical contributions to the field of Architecture.

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