Mecanoo's 141,000-square-metre National Kaohsiung Centre for the Arts, described as the "world's largest performing arts centre under one roof", is now open in Taiwan.
Enclosed beneath a bulging 34,843-square-metre roof, the building is known as Weiwuying, after the neighbouring park.
It contains four new indoor performance venues: a 2,236-seat opera house is located at its centre, with a 1,981-seat concert hall, a 1,210-seat playhouse and a 434-seat recital hall arranged around it.
There is also a fifth performance venue ? the building's roof dips to touch the ground, forming an outdoor theatre facing the park.

The building's flowing roof is defined by the scale and arrangement of the four auditoriums contained within.
"We wanted to develop a new typology, one that takes advantage of the local climate, culture and size of the programme, explained Nuno Gonçalves Fontarra, associate partner at Mecanoo. "The typology of the building is a hybrid between a single block and a complex of several individual venues," he told Dezeen.

The art centre's auditoriums are all accessed from a covered foyer, named the Banyan Plaza, which runs throughout the building around the venues, creating a publicly accessible area for people to gather.
"All venues are connected by a public square like it would happen in a complex of several buildings," explained Fontarra.
"The difference in our case is that this space is covered and unified with a conti...