When I was still studying, Toyo Ito won a competition in the city I was studying at the time, Ghent. I remember going to a lecture of him where he explained the design for the Waalse Krook.

As with many projects in Belgium, they never got to actually building the winning design.

A few years later Toyo Ito proposed a very similar design for a theater half way across the world in Taichung, Taiwan.

Last year, I finally got to see that actual building in real, and it brought vivid memories back of my years in Architecture school. Even though the design isn’t completely same, different site parameters and all, but it does resemble the same ideas and fluid pockets that bring light and air into the midst of the buildings.

Project: National Taichung Theater
Location: Taichung, Taiwan
Time: November 2019
Designed by Toyo Ito