Kris Yao (born 1951) is a Taiwanese architect, founder and head of KRIS YAO | ARTECH, with offices in Taipei and Shanghai. Born and raised in Taipei, he studied at Tunghai University and took a master's degree at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1978, then set up his firm in 1985. Its work, mostly in Greater China, ranges from stations for Taiwan High Speed Rail, such as Hsinchu, to the Southern Branch of the National Palace Museum in Chiayi and the Wuzhen Theater in China. He received Taiwan's National Award for Arts in 2007.
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The Lanyang Museum in Yilan (2010) takes its form from the tilted rock ridges, or cuestas, of the Beiguan coast: its roof rises from the ground at 20 degrees to meet a wall at 70. Water-Moon Monastery (Nung Chan Monastery) in Taipei (2012), a Buddhist monastery he rebuilt that year, won the Taiwan Architecture Award in 2013. The China Steel Corporation Headquarters in Kaohsiung (2012), 29 storeys and 135 metres high, is four tubes bound around a central core, with a faceted façade that shifts every eight floors to make outdoor terraces.
