Welcome to Whale Tribe!
This place was created over nearly a month by three Taiwanese architecture studios—biofication, SenseSite Studio, and BYHAND—working an average of ten hours a day with 2,000 pieces of wooden slats. On the left, facing the glass curtain wall, is "A Place to Gather" and "The Shelter", created by biofication. On the right is "The Making of a Forest", created by SenseSite Studio. The transforming food cart that opens and folds away throughout the space, along with the sculptures suspended and placed throughout the main hall, are works by BYHAND. The three studios continually interpret grafting, becoming, and unfolding in their own distinctive ways, responding to the core concept of "Beyond Loneliness" as a spatial dramaturgy.
Everything you see before you has emerged from wooden slats that once had nothing to do with one another, eventually forming new connections.
Through countless connections, the rough wooden slats evolve into a space giving birth to a place, and bring a scene to life. Honestly, when we first carried the slats here, one piece at a time, we did not know what form it would eventually take. All we knew was to keep feeling, keep improvising, keep breaking and rebuilding, trying and refining, taking apart and putting back together.
Slowly, the tribe began to emerge. Like whales calling to one another across the vast ocean, the three teams found their way into the same waters through listening and responding. After more than 200 hours of working alongside one another, they shaped a space, shaped relationships, and, along the way, shaped a shared memory.
Perhaps this is what the journey of human connection is all about.
We answer order with freedom,
constraint with openness,
fixation with grafting.
With our hands and minds, we give shape to imagination. Nothing here is driven by algorithms. It is shaped by our human capacity to feel, think, and imagine. We hope that when you visit Whale Tribe, you will encounter the genius loci that captivates us, and also be inspired by it.
"Beyond Loneliness" is not about erasing it,
but about creating connections, learning to care for one another, and allowing relationships to take root.
Visit the Beyond Loneliness Facebook page for more information.
About The Thermos Foundation
Founded in 2005, The Thermos Foundation has made its home on the slopes of Yangmingshan, where it is now home to two distinctive cultural spaces: Studio 94 and Garde 91.
Studio 94 is a space devoted to experimentation and creative exploration, while Garde 91 is an intimate museum dedicated primarily to a collection of stone sculptures. Together, these two spaces have served as the home and setting for the Foundation's diverse educational programs and artistic initiatives for more than a decade.
Through exhibitions, lectures, concerts, workshops, a library, and a wide range of interdisciplinary and international cultural exchanges, the Foundation has continued to explore the possibilities of humanistic engagement without boundaries. Its programs seek to foster emotional connections, awaken our senses, cultivate empathy, and nurture a deeper understanding of the world. At their heart is a long-standing commitment to learning through doing.
It is this same belief that has given rise to Beyond Loneliness at the Taipei Performing Arts Center — a spatial experience created through the collaboration of three young creative teams, inviting people to reconnect with the world through their senses.
The Thermos Foundation continues to explore new possibilities in humanistic education, with a particular focus on nurturing meaningful and lasting connections. Through activities in many different forms, we hope to invite people to rediscover the pleasures of everyday life, the richness of being alive, and the wonder and preciousness of our five senses. Above all, may our imagination, creativity, and actions bring a little more happiness and warmth into people's lives.
