MAD Architects’ pursuit of an urban landscape at one with the natural environment has produced another organic icon in Northern China. Following the opening of its wave-shaped China Wood Sculpture Museum in the burgeoning metropolis of Harbin in 2013, the Beijing-based firm has completed a remarkable venue for music and theater in the same city, surrounded by wetlands on the edge of the Songhua River.
The Harbin Opera House occupies 850,000 square feet of space on the specially designated Cultural Island and incorporates a grand theater with a capacity of 1,600 and a second, more intimate stage with space for an audience of 400. According to the architects, the building was designed “in response to the force and spirit of the northern city’s untamed wilderness and frigid climate.” The sinuous building reads as a natural extension of the surrounding habitat, its parametric skin of aluminum and glass reflecting light in a manner reminiscent of the surrounding water.
“We envision Harbin Opera House as a cultural center of the future, a tremendous performance venue as well as a dramatic public space that embodies the integration of human, art, and the city identity while synergistically blending with the surrounding nature,” said Ma Yansong, founding principal of MAD Architects. The curvilinear form of the building certainly channels natural imagery: the swooping exterior of the opera house is reminiscent of a mysterious, aquatic animal half-submerged within its own lagoon at the edge of the Songhua River.
A curling, octopus-like tentacle wraps around the edge of the site to form a plaza in front of the entrance with integrated seating where people can gather and relax before entering to view a performance. The layout entails a journey. People cross a bridge onto Harbin Cultural Island before making their way across the plaza, through the lobby, and into the theater at the building’s heart. “The architectural procession choreographs a conceptual narrative, one that transforms visitors into performers,” says MAD.
The building’s shimmering aluminum shell is reminiscent of Zaha Hadid’s Heydar Aliyev Center in Azerbaijan or even the tiled exterior of the Sydney Opera House — a worthy comparison given its immediate iconicity and high-end cultural program. Like Utzøn’s masterpiece, MAD’s design possesses a close relationship with its aqueous context, but, while Sydney’s icon evokes the boats that travel on the river’s surface, Ma Yansong’s structure appears as if sculpted from the water itself.
Lobby and circulation spaces
If the exterior of the building invites metaphors pertaining to the natural environment, the material finishes and detailing of the internal spaces take this evocative language to another level. Circulation spaces are sheltered with white ribs reminiscent of a prehistoric skeleton.
The grand theater
Sinuous staircases and tiered timber balconies within the grand theater evoke soaring canyon walls. Undulating concrete panels covering the interior of the smaller theater echo rippling pools of water frozen by the cold air of Northern China.
The smaller theater
Each space within the Harbin Opera House illustrates MAD Architects’ adept use of simple materials to achieve complex effects, and credit must also go to the construction team, which appears to have delivered the project with an exceptionally high level of craftsmanship. Coupled with atmospheric ambient lighting — designed by Toryo International Lighting Design Center and Beijing United Artists Lighting Design — the experiential qualities of the building look set to provide as much drama as the operatic performances themselves.
To see more images of and information about MAD Architects’ latest projects across China and beyond, check out the firm’s in-depth profile on Architizer.