OMA announced on Tues­day that 50 of their 300 employ­ees have to leave. Busi­ness Direc­tor van de Chijs com­ments that he expects OMA to sur­vive the eco­nom­i­cal crisis as busi­ness is going well. But as they intend to be “ter­ri­bly care­ful” the diceded on the lay-​offs.

In related news OMA announces the same day that they won the com­pe­ti­tion to build the Taipei Per­form­ing Arts Centre (as widely reported). Have also a look at the very inter­est­ing runner-​up by Abalos+Sentkiewicz.

Read on for more pic­tures and the press release of the OMA design.

OMA to build Taipei Per­form­ing Arts Centre

Rotterdam/Beijing, 27 Jan­u­ary 2009 – The Office for Met­ro­pol­i­tan Archi­tec­ture (OMA) has been awarded the first prize in the design com­pe­ti­tion to build the Taipei Per­form­ing Arts Centre. The design, led by OMA part­ners Rem Kool­haas and Ole Scheeren, was selected from over 135 entries from 24 coun­tries by an inter­na­tional jury.

The scheme includes a 1,500 seat the­atre and two 800 seat the­atres which plug into a cen­tral cube, clad in cor­ru­gated glass, that com­bines the stage accom­mo­da­tions of the three the­atres in a single whole. Each the­atre can be used inde­pen­dently or in com­bi­na­tion with the other the­atres. Con­nect­ing the dif­fer­ent the­atres offers new and exper­i­men­tal the­atri­cal pos­si­bil­i­ties. A public tra­jec­tory inside the cube exposes parts of the back­stage areas oth­er­wise hidden in typ­i­cal the­atres. The cube is placed on a socle pre­serv­ing the exist­ing lively local food market.

OMA will col­lab­o­rate with local archi­tect Artech Inc. to build the 40,000m2 the­ater com­plex. The stage design is being devel­oped with Ducks Sceno and the engi­neer­ing is being pro­vided by Arup. The centre is sched­uled to be com­pleted in 2013 with a budget of 3.8 bil­lion Taiwan dol­lars (90 mil­lion Euro). The Taipei city coun­cil expects the centre to fur­ther facil­i­tate the devel­op­ment of local per­form­ing groups and add to Taipei’s image as an inter­na­tional cul­tural hub.

The project is led by OMA part­ners Rem Kool­haas and Ole Scheeren. The com­pe­ti­tion team included asso­ciate André Schmidt and archi­tects Adam Framp­ton and Mar­i­ano Sagasta, amongst many others. Koolhaas’s and Scheeren’s pre­vi­ous col­lab­o­ra­tions include the CCTV Head­quar­ters and TVCC Cul­tural Centre in Bei­jing, as well as Prada Epi­cen­tre Stores in New York and Los Angeles.