A Living Welcome: The Story of TAS’s New Welcome Hall

Walk through the main entrance of Taipei American School today and the first impression is noticeably different. Trees and planting rise into the multi-level space. Warm light fills the hall. Curved “islands” create places to sit, meet, wait, and gather. Student work and TAS stories become part of the arrival experience. Movement still flows easily through one of the busiest parts of campus, but the space now invites something that the former lobby rarely did: pause. 

That change is intentional. 

Created in partnership with internationally renowned Rosan Bosch Studio, the new Welcome Hall is one of the first completed physical expressions of TAS’s long-term Strategic Masterplan. The project began not with a question about how to renovate a lobby, but with a larger question: what should someone understand about TAS from the moment they walk through our doors? 

Through site visits, workshops, meetings, and dialogue with TAS leadership, Board members, students, faculty, staff, families, and other stakeholders, shared aspirations emerged. The community wanted the entrance to communicate belonging and identity; to connect TAS meaningfully to Taiwan; to support well-being, comfort, and intuitive movement; to be flexible enough for the changing rhythms of school life; and to make learning and community visible. 

Those aspirations became six Core Themes that guide the Strategic Masterplan: Belonging, Community, Well-being, Nature, Flexibility, and Purpose. In the Welcome Hall, they are not words applied after the fact. They shape how the space actually works. 

From Passage to Place 

The previous lobby was generous in scale but functioned largely as a place of transit. The redesigned hall creates a landscape of destinations within that movement: places to arrive, orient, wait, meet, exhibit, celebrate, or simply sit for a moment. 

A flexible welcome point provides a human first point of contact. Sculpted seating islands allow students, families, colleagues, alumni, and visitors to gather without interrupting circulation. Exhibition surfaces give student work and school stories a permanent home at the heart of arrival. A Welcome Lounge adds informal seating and a coffee and tea point, allowing the space to shift naturally from morning arrivals to conversations, gatherings, and community events. 

The result is not a fixed or ceremonial image of TAS. It is intended to be a living portrait of the school, continually renewed by the community who uses it. 

Rooted in Taiwan 

The design also tells a distinctly local story. TAS is international in outlook, but it has grown in Taiwan for generations. Rosan Bosch Studio translated elements of Taiwan’s natural landscapes and cultural references into the way the hall looks, feels, and functions. 

Water inspires movement. Flowing routes connect the main entrance, courtyard, lounge, stairs, and surrounding campus, allowing people to move intuitively rather than through a rigid corridor. 

Islands create places of identity and belonging. Like an archipelago, each has its own character and purpose while remaining connected to the larger whole. They provide intimacy when only a few people are present and recognizable gathering points when the hall is full. 

Bamboo informs the rhythm and verticality of the space, drawing on qualities of strength, flexibility, resilience, and growth. Planting and vertical gardens rise through the generous volume, while trees and natural textures bring the feeling of a layered Taiwanese landscape indoors. 

Light completes that landscape. Daylight enters through the glazed façades and roof, while suspended lights occupy the upper volume and bring warmth and human scale to the space. 

These references are not simply decorative. They shape movement, gathering, comfort, orientation, and the relationship between people and place. 

A Hall That Belongs to the Community 

Perhaps the most important element of the Welcome Hall is that it is deliberately unfinished in one sense: its identity will continue to be created by the people who use it. 

Student work can change. Exhibitions can evolve. Furniture can move. The hall can support an ordinary school morning, a parent conversation, an open house, a performance, a celebration, or a community event. Its architecture provides a framework, but the life of TAS completes it. 

That is why the Welcome Hall represents more than a renovation. It is a physical expression of a school that wants its values to be visible: student-centered, rooted in place, open to the world, connected across differences, and continually evolving. 

"I think it's wonderful to walk into the new lobby and see how relaxing and beautiful it is. It looks like you're walking into a park or a world that's really based on beauty." Richard Arnold, TAS Historian and Legacy Advisor who has served at TAS for over 50 years shared. "I hope everyone will be respectful of the beauty of it and appreciate that we're going in a new direction. If you're coming to TAS in the fall of 2026, it's a new school, with a new attitude. I think everybody wants a more relaxed, more gentle, and more humane kind of interaction." 

For a new student arriving on the first day, a parent coming to campus, an alumnus returning after many years, or a visitor encountering TAS for the first time, the Welcome Hall is now quite literally the first chapter of the TAS experience.