A Cultural Engine for Taichung The Taichung Green Museumbrary:

Art museums and libraries have long been important symbols of urban civilization. The Taichung Green Museumbrary, located in the Shuinan Economic and Trade Park, brings the Taichung Art Museum and the Taichung Public Library together within a single complex—an unusual arrangement indeed.

The vigorous civic spirit of Taichung, Taiwan’s second-largest city, is also evident in the development of its local libraries.

Building a city of readers

Taichung Public Library Director Tseng Hui-chun traces this philanthropic tradition back decades. Lin Yi-wen of Wufeng funded the Wufeng Yiwen Branch, which opened in 1968, while Vedan Enterprise donated money to build the Shalu Shenbo Branch, which opened in 1990.

More recently, the Wen-Ying Foundation donated funds to establish the Xidong Branch; Hsu Ching-tang and Li Pik-hung founded the Dongshi Hsu Liang Yu Library in memory of their son, who died young; and book-loving entrepreneur Wang Shi-xu funded the Nantun Lobsang Library. Each began as a private initiative. The private and public sectors then worked together to define the planning and design requirements before construction began.

The 2,300 volunteers serving across the branches form the largest library volunteer corps among Taiwan’s six special municipalities, with their combined service exceeding 160,000 hours annually. “Long-standing cooperation among private companies, foundations, volunteers, and the public sector shows that one plus one can add up to more than two,” Tseng says.

Taichung Public Library Director Tseng Hui-chun hopes the library will become a place residents want to visit every day.

Shaping Taichung’s reading culture

As the main library, the Taichung Public Library takes a citywide governance perspective, enabling the city’s branches to work as a coordinated network rather than on their own.

To advance equitable access to reading, the library uses a logistics system to integrate its branches and offer an interbranch service that lets readers borrow and return books at different locations. It also provides self-service borrowing and return kiosks and mobile-phone borrowing, and plans to work with social-housing communities across Taichung to establish micro-sized smart libraries.

Although it serves all ages, the library also tailors its services by age and audience. For example, it promotes family reading for babies, toddlers, and children up to five years old and also works with elementary and secondary schools on a “Young Book Curators” initiative, inviting teenagers to use the collection to recommend reading lists, design book bands, and write book summaries.

The children’s reading area has its own exit opening directly outdoors, along with wooden bookshelves and lower furniture designed for young readers.

Step inside the Green Museumbrary and one immediately sees how the reading rooms embrace the “negative space” that is a specialty of the architectural team at SANAA who designed the complex. Expansive interiors, low bookshelves that preserve open sightlines, and abundant seating throughout create an environment in which visitors want to lose themselves in books.

“We hope the library will become a place residents want to visit every day,” Tseng says. By proactively taking books and reading beyond library buildings themselves while also drawing people in, the Taichung Public Library is emerging, in its role as the main library, as an important hub driving the city’s cultural momentum.

Expansive reading rooms, low bookshelves, and abundant seating create an environment that invites visitors to lose themselves in books. 

Tracing Taichung’s art history

Taichung’s library tradition has a long history. By contrast, residents have waited far too long for an art museum the city could call its own.

Although the city is already home to the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, a heavyweight institution, a local art museum ultimately has a different mission. The Taichung Art Museum “can map the forms, character, and artists of central Taiwan’s art history, respond to local art history, and in turn energize the city as a whole,” says Director Nicole Yi-hsin Lai.

Taichung Art Museum Director Nicole Yi-hsin Lai hopes the long-awaited museum will grow alongside the city’s residents. 

Taichung sits at a crossroads for travel along Taiwan’s west coast, linking north and south, and is a place where art communities have long been closely connected through exchange, patronage, support, and exhibitions. The city’s geography also brings together the natural resources of the mountains and sea, giving earlier artists ready materials to draw upon. Large-scale sculpture and installation art are also common, often created for expansive sites or major construction projects with large open spaces. These factors have caused fluidity, change, and inclusiveness to become key terms for describing Taichung’s artistic character.

The museum’s current exhibition Swinging A-Go-Go: Wang Shui-Ho, A Boundary Crosser of His Time—its first solo exhibition devoted to a Taichung artist—speaks directly to these qualities. Wang worked across multiple media including painting, sculpture, architecture, and interior design. Though he had no formal art-school training, he profoundly shaped postwar Taichung’s urban landscape. Only the sustained attention of a municipal art museum could bring this singular talent out of obscurity and into the spotlight.

The museum is currently presenting its first solo exhibition devoted to a Taichung artist: Swinging A-Go-Go: Wang Shui-Ho, A Boundary Crosser of His Time. (courtesy of Taichung Art Museum)

Making culture accessible to all

The museum, which actively develops exhibitions for the public, also hopes to make “cultural equity” a reality by ensuring that people of different backgrounds and identities can enter freely and without barriers. On weekends it offers family tours that depart from conventional guided-tour formats. It also offers “inclusive tours” designed for various groups including people with disabilities, the elderly, and speakers of other languages.

Many Taichung residents have memories of local libraries accompanying them through their school years. A local art museum, however, had long been missing from their lives.

With the opening of the Green Museumbrary, Lai says, “People can come here to look at art, read a book, or take a walk in the park. But they can also simply drop by and wander around, without feeling any pressure.” She hopes the Green Museumbrary can become as natural as breathing—not only an important cultural hub for the city, but part of residents’ everyday lives.

The Taichung Art Museum is working to advance cultural equity, creating a welcoming space for children, people with disabilities, the elderly, and speakers of other languages.