Zhuhai Opera House / SPF architects
SPF Architects, based in Culver City, California, have created an design for the Zhuhai Opera House in Guangdong Province, China. Learning from the traditional principles of the region, the opera house’s form gives the appearance of stacked pebbles. Such an idea was conceived as a way to create a visual balance based on the Chinese principle from the five element theory. The opera house has three stacked levels that provide varying programmatic activities, such as a 1500 seat auditorium, large plaza gathering space, rehearsal hall, restaurants and other public amenities. A forest behind the structure gives the impression of growth and sustainability.
More images after the break.
Images courtesy of SPF architects. As seen on designboom.
Related articles:
37 comments »
too crazy…..
wonder d’ council actually knew that they had this proposal for taipei one.
A snake sit on the land made of red bricks without any designed landscape…
oooops, juz noticed they are different architects from d’ taipei performing arts centre proposal by Francois Blanciak Architect.
http://www.archdaily.com/20783/taipei-performing-arts-center-proposal-by-francois-blanciak-architect/
Dammmmmmn, that’s even worse!!!
looks like a snake. very weird.
aliens! they’ve landed!
AHHHH!
“A forest behind the structure gives the impression of growth and sustainability.”
lol who needs sustainability when you can fake it
Anaconda sequel
blaaaargh….
seems like a 2nd year undergraduate project.
section just shows how the form has such little relationship with the program. just cram a bunch of orthagonal boxes inside a curvy shell however they’ll fit. come on.
looks like they took the good part from the Taipei Performing Arts Center and renovated it.
I guess you can call it “Quoting”
How are we going to look back at these ridiculous buildings 50 years from now (sorry, 10 years)? SPF simply could not present this to a group of enquiring architecture students because they would just tear it apart.
This is the epitome of 3D lazy.
i wannt to see the Structural solution of that
On that point it would be interesting to see a lot more structural solutions here on arch daily, we constantly see the pretty (or ugly) renders, but what is behind all of that? Mr. Basulto (Spelling?) it would be very much appreciated to see more of this in the future. thanks.
how is its structure ???????
This firm should disband. Seriously if all the creativity they can manage is a shitty rip off a bad design they need to readdress why they are architects. The first project was bad enough…now we need two?
Shit like this is what marginalizes our profession.
WHAT A DISGUSTING SNAKE!!!
TOTALLY BULLSH*T!
I assume that is their competition entry and that it is not the winning design.
Even so .. what a load of rubbish! I would be embarrassed to have something like this in my part 1 portfolio.
horrible
…why so ugly!? ssssssssssnake!
Horrible ugly.Monster.
kolohe: you’re absolutely right.
So many haters here! It’s a cool building. Too bad they didn’t even try to work out the structure. Maybe a tip of the hat toward gravity and the need for trusses would help pacify the angry monsters posting comments about the design.
@Ryan
cool building? u gotta be one of the interns that draw this s***!
I would love to see more interior perspectives. The experience of looking out of this thing would be incredible, but it is quite imposing from the exterior. It is unfortunate that they interpreted the traditional notion of stacked pebbles so visually and literally, while forgetting the inherent structure of the concept. At least it gives the “impression” of sustainability though. On the bandwagon, thumbs down.
Speaking as a theatre person with a love of opera, I really can’t see how this design is supposed to work out. First off, how are people supposed to get from the lobby to their seats? Will an elevator rise through the middle of the orchestra stalls?
Secondly, I know restricted sightlines are the rule for the upper level seats, but that *entire* rear magenta-ish area looks like it will be cut off by the proscenium, leaving the people in the highest seats only seeing one third to one half of the stage. Surely modern architects, with all the freedom available to them, should be able to design a theatre with sightlines that are good for almost everybody.
The loading dock is extremely poorly designed. The entrance to the theatre from the loading dock looks to be barely eight feet high, creating severe restrictions on the size of what can be brought in, and the hydraulic lift up to the stage creates restrictions on the weight of what can be shifted at a time. In addition, it ties up the stage crew who have to wait on the hydraulic lift to get up to stage level and then for the crew “up top” to move the scenery before any more can be loaded in. This is going to be time-consuming and irritating.
The fly system is a good idea, but where are they going to hang the lights? There doesn’t seem to be any indication that this is a factor in their design. I’ve worked in opera, and the best laid out theatres I’ve seen with a fly system have catwalks and grids that allow stage crew access to all points of the theatre and give the lighting crew something to hang the lights from. This is clearly not an option in this design.
Also, aren’t they going to have rehearsal rooms? This was claimed, but I’m not seeing them, unless they’re that rear stage area behind the fly system, which would be even stupider than having it be part of the working stage.
Finally, WHERE ARE THE DRESSING ROOMS? I can’t see any rooms here that look like they communicate with the stage. I suppose they could have set aside some of the “offices” as dressing rooms, but why wouldn’t they just say so?
Can’t beat a good old tabla rasa, can you? Makes running 3Dstudiomax so much easier when there’s no context and topography to think about.
What an ego!
Expensive ego.
China dreams for a contact with aliens!
Plus, y go curvy when your section is all V and H??
terrible
i would very much like to know what kind of traditional principle of Zhuhai that provokes architecture of stacked pebbles..
Links to this article »