Thursday · October · 1 · 2026
“Time brings all things to pass.”
— Aeschylus
Sun & daylight
The sun rises at 05:46 and sets at 17:43 in Taipei today, giving 11h 56m of daylight. Solar noon is at 11:44.
05:46
Sunrise
11:44
Noon
17:43
Sunset
Midnight
23:44
Sunrise
05:46
Solar noon
11:44
Sunset
17:43
Solar midnight
23:44
Daylight
11h 56m
Daylight runs about 13h 41m around the June solstice and 10h 34m around the December solstice.
Daylight saving time
Taipei does not observe daylight saving time. Clocks stay on UTC+8 all year, so the local time never shifts with the seasons.
Public holidays
Taiwan has 1 public holiday in October 2026.
Architecture
Taipei built most of its landmarks in the last twenty years, on a basin that is both seismic and in the path of typhoons. Structure is negotiated with the weather here before anything else is decided.
Completed 2024
Renzo Piano
A private art museum at the foot of an office tower in Xinyi. Renzo Piano lifted the galleries above an open ground floor and glazed the perimeter, so the museum is visible from the street rather than sealed off. A single stair climbs the full height against that glass. It is his first building in Taiwan, and it takes the form of a pavilion rather than a landmark.
Completed 2022
Rem Koolhaas · David Gianotten
A theatre complex at Shilin holding three auditoriums in one mass. Rem Koolhaas and David Gianotten plugged the three volumes into a central cube containing every stage and service, so any two can be joined into one long space. A sphere holding an eight hundred seat theatre pushes out of one face. A public route runs through the building past the backs of the stages.
Completed 2020
RUR Architecture
A music venue in Nangang, split across a boulevard into separate halls. RUR Architecture shaped the main hall as a faceted crystalline mass raised on a plinth, with the plaza continuing underneath it. The exhibition and creative buildings on the far side repeat that geometry at smaller scale. It was planned as a district for an industry rather than as a single concert hall.
Completed 2018
Vincent Callebaut
A residential tower in Xinyi that twists through ninety degrees over twenty one floors. Vincent Callebaut rotated each floor plate by four and a half degrees, which staggers the balconies into a continuous spiral of planting. The core stays fixed and the twist happens only in the slabs around it. The planting is the reason for the form rather than something applied to it.
Completed 2004
C. Y. Lee
An office tower in Xinyi built as eight stacked sections. C. Y. Lee flared each section outward as it rises, taking the profile from a bamboo stalk and the number from local custom. A steel damper of several hundred tonnes hangs near the top, painted and left open to the floors around it. Exposing a component that exists only to solve a structural problem is unusual, and it is the part of the building people remember.