Starting Feb. 10 the National Theater and Concert Hall will close for almost five weeks. While the closure in itself is not unusual -- it is time set aside for annual maintenance and repairs -- this year the period during which the venues will be closed has been slightly extended until March 16 in order to complete the first part of an ambitious renovations and upgrading project that is going change the look of this venerable cultural institution and also bring its facilities up to international standard.
When it was first completed, it was one of the most advanced venues of its kind, but 15 years on, theater technology has moved forward apace, and the governing body of the CKS Cultural Foundation, under which the National Theater, National Concert Hall, Experimental Theater and Recital Hall operate, felt it was necessary to bring it into line with national-level performance venues in the developed world.
Planning for this extensive project began soon after Ju Chung-ching (朱宗慶) took office as the director of the CKS Cultural Foundation, and with the aid of an NT$45-million grant of financial support from the Ministry of Education, in addition to money from the foundation's own budget, both the interiors and exteriors of the two landmark performance venues will undergo extensive renovations.
"The National Theater and National Concert Hall are unique buildings that have a powerful symbolic function in Taiwan," Ju said. "So we approached the prospect of exterior renovation with considerable solemnity."
While Ju aims to integrate the buildings more completely with the city around them, broadening their functions as a performance venues and public spaces, he said it was important that the basic look of the buildings remained unchanged.
The most noticeable change will be the removal of the unsightly steel barricades that cut the theater and concert hall off from Aikuo East Road and Hsinyi East Road respectively. These will be replaced by a low concrete strip designed to match the graceful lines of the building's Chinese-style eves. Flag posts and billboards will further give color to the perimeter of the building. On the Aikuo East Road side, a fountain is also planned, as is space for outdoor performances. Under Ju's directorship, significant effort has already been made to extend the performance space of the venues from their formal main auditoriums into the loggia and palazzo outside.
On the Hsinyi Road side, a sunken area is being mooted which will serve as a coffee area looking onto the attractive tree-lined boulevard.
These two major external construction projects are still in the final stages of planning, but organizers hope that work will begin in July or August and be completed by the end of the year. More immediately, the CKS Cultural Foundation will be using the five-week period from Feb. 10 to undertake significant internal renovations.
These will include everything from a significant increase of women's lavatory facilities to an upgrading of the National Theater's lighting lineup, the installation of LCD units for the presentation of subtitles, and the installation of more advanced units for stage drops -- allowing for greater flexibility -- and the improvement of facilities for live broadcast and recording.
According to Li Shih-ming (李世明), head of the maintenance division, the buildings will also be subject to extensive structural testing. "While they seem very safe, the effect of the 921 earthquake on the buildings' structural integrity needs to be examined."
Another area that is being focused on is the artists' dressing rooms. Prototypes have already been built, which are considerably more luxurious than those that have been used for the last 15 years. "We also took into consideration the requirements both of local and foreign artists performing here," said a CKS spokesperson. "In the past there had been complaints that the rooms did not meet the needs of Taiwanese performers, who are often of a smaller build than their Western counterparts."
Ju emphasized the care with which this current refurbishment project has been embarked on. The advantage that the organization now has is 15 years of experience as Taiwan's premier performance venue and the accumulated comments of visiting groups.
Tseng Wen-hsian (
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and