Architecture: National Taiwan Museum & Brussels Stock Exchange

National Taiwan Museum: Original photo by Foxy Who \(^∀^)/, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53803005 & Brussels Stock Exchange: Original photo by User:Ben2 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=851391

Museums’ unique origin stories and memorable architectural features reflect the era in which they were founded. The National Taiwan Museum’s main building, under construction from 1913 to 1915, embodies the Western eclectic and Neoclassical architectural style, then prevalent across the Empire of Japan. In its first four decades, the structure served as the Taiwan Governor’s Museum, and then after 1949, the Taiwan Provincial Museum, before finally becoming a national landmark for anthropology and natural history in 1999.

It is not uncommon to find similar eclectic structures throughout Europe, with parallel stories. In Belgium, although it features the Neo-Renaissance and Second Empire styles, Brussels’ former Stock Exchange shares certain traits with the National Taiwan Museum. Both are decorated with ornaments and sculptures, though to different extents. While the former has an abundance of lions, garlands, and sculptures personifying economic activities, the latter depicts far fewer and simpler displays of greenery, shields, and the Roman bounded bundle of sticks known as “fasces.” The main entrances are supported by impressive Greco-Roman columns, in the Corinthian style in Brussels, and in the Doric style in Taipei. Both buildings are also topped by beautiful domes.

They also share a link to a story of occupation. While the Brussels Stock Exchange building was actually completed in 1873, the stock exchange itself had first come into existence in 1801 by Napoleon’s decree—a time when Belgium was under foreign rule and occupied by French troops. The building at the heart of the National Taiwan Museum was constructed by the Japanese, who ruled Taiwan as a colony from 1895 to 1945. The incorporation of Western architectural elements was a popular practice in Japan in the late 1800s and early 1900s, to symbolize modernization. Many important buildings in Taiwan built in that era reflected this trend.

At present, both structures have been converted from their original purposes: the NTM main building went from a memorial to Japanese colonial figures, to a museum representing the heart of Taiwan’s culture and identity. In 2023, the Brussels Stock Exchange, once an economic center, will become a museum about one of Belgium’s most beloved culinary treasures—Belgian beer.