Toyo Ito at the theater construction site. Displaying architecture in a gallery is always a challenge. This is especially true with a building still under construction. And even more so when that building is Taiwan’s National Taichung Theater—unarguably Tokyo architect Toyo Ito’s most ambitious project to date. Taking Ito’s structural know-how and spatial ingenuity to new limits, this extraordinary complex appears as a rectangular block. But contained within is a spectacular 3D grid of tubular voids hinted at by the hourglass-shaped cutouts that define the elevations. Expanding and contracting, the hollows accommodate the various programmatic pieces, including a 2014-seat theater,
For nearly half a century, the Royal Conservatory, Canada’s venerable music education institution, has occupied a distinctive late-19th-century masonry building at the northern edge of the University of Toronto campus on Bloor Street, one of the city’s major east-west thoroughfares.
Designing a small performing arts building that would work for both indoor recitals and outdoor concerts, Craig Hodgetts and Hsinming Fung drew inspiration from musical instruments.