Name: 臺北流行音樂中心
Year of Establishment: 2020
Located At: Taipei, Taiwan
Did You Know…?
Taiwan is a major focal point for Mandarin pop music, and the Taipei Music Center is, for pop music workers, one of the friendliest spots for everything from production to performance; and, for the public, the best place to get up close with music and to appreciate musical performances. Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with a comfortable, spacious park, it is a venue for a diverse range of activities and events.
Address: No. 99, Sec. 8, Civic Blvd., Nangang District, Taipei City, Taiwan (ROC)
The Taipei Music Center, which officially opened its doors in September 2020, is Asia's first center dedicated entirely to pop music, providing a multi-functional venue built with a specific focus on the genre. With 17 years in the making, the center covers some 8.96 hectares and is divided by Civic Boulevard into north and south sites. Designed by the American firm RUR Architecture, the Taipei Music Center is structurally inspired by the Roman Forum, making use of a circular form to bring together art, commerce, marketplaces, and performances to create a single multipurpose venue.
The north and south sites are connected by a skywalk. At the north site is a performance hall designed especially for performances of pop music, capable of comfortably accommodating some 5,000 people. The exterior of the building has an irregular, shell-like appearance that has earned it the nickname "the spaceship," and its steel structure painted with a grey-green roof is the result of the architects drawing inspiration from Taiwan's many rolling, verdant mountains. The shape itself also calls to mind the development of Taiwanese pop music, which has experienced repeated peaks and valleys since the start of this new century and all the turmoil new technologies have brought to the industry since.
Turning to the south site, we have the Pop Music Cultural Hall, a cubic building with six floors above ground and one below. This is the first exhibition hall in Taiwan built entirely around the genre of pop music, and to reflect this, it has been built in a distinctive wave-like form, like the rising and falling of musical sound waves. In addition to displaying cultural items, the museum also brings together a variety of audiovisual, multimedia, and other interactive installations to showcase the glorious history of Taiwanese pop music. The Pop Music Cultural Hall is expected to open in 2021.
Also set to open in 2021, and similarly located on the south site is the Industry Zone. The exterior of this building is a glimmering crystal shape, and inside, it brings together music performance spaces and a popular industry hub/incubator, accommodating a variety of uses. The four performance live house spaces are capable of hosting audiences between 200 to 1,600 people. There are also classrooms, rehearsal rooms, offices, recording studios, and a themed restaurant planned, all of which are aimed at making the site a cradle for future pop music talents.
At night, the three main buildings are lit up in colorful projected lights to symbolize the wealth of creativity and energy inside, and the vibrant look has already made the center a popular site in northern Taiwan for checking-in and posting on social media.
In addition to the main building, the performance hall also boasts impressive facilities, including the largest soundproof door on a specialized venue in Taiwan, its French L-Acoustics K2 sound system, which is one of the world's three top audio brands, and an elevatable stage which can be converted to suit different performances, and mother truss that provides for safe operation. This high-standard setup is capable of offering a perfect performance venue for all kinds of shows.
The Taipei Music Center's full suite of facilities also features integrated 5G technology and innovative applications, offering the first 5G-capable media room from where the media can watch the shows and monitor activities at the performance hall at the same time. This is the first performance venue in Taiwan to make use of 5G in commercial operations.
Since its official opening, the Center has played host to many large-scale events, including an opening concert, the 11th Golden Indie Music Awards, and the 31st Golden Melody Awards, giving both the audience and the musicians in attendance a first glimpse of the high-quality venue.
Together with Kaohsiung Music Center, which is still under construction, the Taipei Music Center is part of government's 2003 flagship program aimed to boost the nation's pop music industry throughout Taiwan, from north to south.
This diamond-class center combines performance, technology, industry, and talent training, and it aims to become the leading pop music center in Asia. It is expected to provide support to the pop music industry and peripheral industries to create a dynamic energy through the fusion of pop music and cultural industries while showcasing the high quality of Taiwan's pop music culture.