A Light Tree Among the Street Trees: Taipei Lumitree and the Art-First Outdoor Screen

Section 2 of Dunhua South Road, in Taipei's Da'an District, carries one of the finest street-tree arcades in the city. Dipterocarps and banyans meet in the air above the carriageway, and the green corridor they form — known locally as the Dunnan tree-lined boulevard — covers the pavement in a soft canopy. At one point where that shade breaks off, on the plaza of the Baohong Dunnan commercial building, a 10-metre "tree of light" has stood since the autumn of 2024. Taipei Lumitree; in Chinese, 敦南之森, the Dunnan Forest. A 360-degree LED column ringed all the way round, with a transparent LED wall standing behind it, is kindled there as though a second, artificial tree had been planted among the street trees.

After dark, the shadow of a Taiwanese leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis) appears on the far side of the transparent wall. Named LUMi, the character walks through the forest on the wall, shows its tail to passers-by who round the back of the column, and returns the greetings of the day. An endangered wild animal plays the lead on a 10-metre screen installed on the plaza of a commercial building — and in that single fact the editorial policy of the apparatus called Taipei Lumitree is concentrated.

Lineage

Taipei Lumitree was developed by Baohong Construction and Kaiyue Construction, two Taiwanese property developers. But the design, operation and content programming of the apparatus are handled by Tiger Party, the New York firm that has run large outdoor media in Times Square; Taipei Lumitree is the company's first project in Asia. Taiwanese outlets covered it in concert from the pre-opening period of September 2024 under the banner of the unveiling of the Dunnan Forest, and Tiger Party's completion release followed on 18 November of the same year.

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One could read this apparatus as a one-off new landmark for the city of Taipei. Seen from the vantage of TENKEI, however, Taipei Lumitree is a case that belongs within the lineage of East Asia's permanent art signage. The SOGO facade in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, which has inserted art into the gaps between advertising towers, and the wall of Seibu Shibuya, which has been running in Tokyo since 2015, are both already within this journal's range. The light tree on Dunhua South Road adds another pole to that field. A permanent screen with Times Square-class specifications, designed from the moment it opened as a place for showing art — that provenance is what makes this case stand out on the signage map of East Asia.

The Apparatus and Its Programming

The hardware figures are more or less consistent across the various reports. Total LED area of 254 square metres, a height of 10 metres, a pixel pitch of P2.9 for outdoor use. Taiwanese outlets describe this as "8K-class" and "equivalent to Times Square." At the centre of the apparatus is the 360-degree LED column, with the transparent LED wall standing behind it. The transparent LED is specified at over 75 percent transmittance, designed so that the street trees and the sky behind it show through the wall. Adding one more tree of light does not block the green arcade of Dunhua South Road — behind that figure for transmittance lies a design decision to hold the streetscape of the trees and an artificial screen together at once.

Tiger Party, which handles the programming, set out an Art First operating policy from the design stage onward. The launch programme was assembled in partnership with HUG, the global artist community co-founded by Randi Zuckerberg and Debbie Soon; the international open call drew 129 submissions, from which twelve were chosen. The selected works are not still images but are composed on the premise of a peculiar format: a 360-degree column and a transparent wall. The very shape of the apparatus prescribes how the work is to be made.

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Since the launch programme, Tiger Party has continued to run a domestic open-call programme in Taiwan called City Lullaby. Separate from the international open call routed through HUG, it is a grassroots slot inviting local makers to submit work that enriches the streetscape. Then, in 2026, Taipei Lumitree was listed on the official Taipei Art Week directory as an Art Institution. A large outdoor LED has been counted into the cultural programme of the city not as an advertising medium but under the category of an art institution — and this shift of classification is fixing the character of the apparatus in public terms.

An Editorial View

What Taipei Lumitree demonstrates is an inverted model for the outdoor screen. Large urban displays are normally installed as advertising media, with art inserted into unsold slots and on anniversaries. The Causeway Bay case in Hong Kong is exactly that: art interventions accumulated in the gaps of an advertising tower. Taipei Lumitree reverses the order. It was designed from the moment of opening as a place for showing art, and commercial branding is folded into the operation only afterwards. Rather than "art in the gaps of advertising," the structure is one in which commerce takes temporary lodging inside an apparatus for art.

The choice of the mascot LUMi is what symbolises this inversion. The lead role on a 10-metre facade installed on the plaza of a commercial building is entrusted neither to a corporate logo nor to a product, but to an endangered species endemic to Taiwan. The Taiwanese leopard cat is an emblematic animal of the conservation movement, and the decision to house it in a light tree within a street-tree arcade shows that this apparatus has ruled out any obvious conversion into an advertising tower from the very first move. On the boundary between art and commercial advertising, the centre of gravity is deliberately placed on the art side — and here is a textbook instance of that operating logic.

Rather than inserting art into the gaps of an advertising tower, commerce takes occasional lodging inside an apparatus for art. Taipei Lumitree turns the order of the outdoor screen upside down.

TENKEI Editorial

The naming itself resonates with the subject this journal has taken up. Lumitree is a compound of light (Lumi) and tree, and the Chinese name 敦南之森 likewise declares itself a forest of light. Into the existing greenery of the street-tree arcade — the ma, the interval opened up within the scenery — one artificial light tree is planted as a single point. Just as the small boats and human figures drawn into a landscape painting turn the scenery into something alive, the tree of light kindled in the shade of Dunhua South Road renews the view of a familiar street. If ma is the concept that opens a space, then the light tree of Taipei Lumitree is an attempt to kindle meaning in that opened green corridor.

Outlook

Within the launch programme, what this journal notes above all is the collaboration on mountain-forest imagery and soundscape between the documentary filmmaker Cheng Chi-hao and Gazer (Gary Chen), who runs the electronic music label ANKR. Footage of Taiwan's primeval mountains is projected onto the 10-metre transparent wall, overlaid with natural sound written for the occasion by ANKR. The physical forest of the street trees, the forest of images on the wall, and the natural sound flowing in are folded together in triplicate on a single apparatus.

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This triple layering indicates a direction particular to Taipei Lumitree, even among the permanent facades of the same East Asia. If the M+ facade in West Kowloon, Hong Kong, is a vertical screen holding up a painting in the air towards Victoria Harbour, then Taipei Lumitree aims at a scene standing on the ground as an extension of the street trees. Where the former floats work above the city's skyline, the latter kindles work in the green shade, at the height of a pedestrian's line of sight. Even within the same undertaking of showing art on a permanent screen, the height at which the apparatus is placed and its relation to what surrounds it bring an entirely different view into being.

As the wall of Seibu in Shibuya, Tokyo, is reported to be ending its role in September 2026, the centre of gravity for the permanent art screen cut loose from advertising in East Asia is quietly shifting. What will the tree of light planted among the street trees of Dunhua South Road, Taipei, go on to kindle? This single point set down in a green corridor is still an open question.

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Sources

1. fig.001數位時代 — Taipei Lumitree 敦南之森(Instagram reel)
2. fig.002台北旅遊網 Taipei Travel — Taipei Lumitree(Instagram)
3. fig.003ANKR — 台灣山林之聲 / Taipei Lumitree(Instagram)
4. [4]Taipei Lumitree — Official Site
5. [5]Taipei Art Week 2026 — Taipei Lumitree listing
6. [6]Tiger Party's first Asian LED project is landmark installation — AV Interactive(2024-11-18)
7. [7]360-Degree LED Column, 10m High Dynamic Windows at New Public Media Project in Taipei — invidis(2024-11-15)
8. [8]台北時尚新地標 Taipei Lumitree 敦南之森 — 中央社
9. [9]HUG

Operations Record

OPERATOR

Tiger Party (NYC; design, operation and programming), developed by two Taiwanese property developers

LOCATION

Taipei

MODEL

Corporate programme — An Art First policy: launched in partnership with the artist community HUG, with the ongoing domestic open call City Lullaby; listed as an art institution at Taipei Art Week 2026

CADENCE

Permanent; a launch programme plus ongoing open calls and special slots

SPEC

A 10 m, 360-degree LED column with a transparent LED wall (over 75% transmittance); 254 m² of LED at P2.9 pitch

SINCE

2024-11

STATUS

Active

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