Guangzhou Opera House
Guangzhou, China
Built in 2010
Main Architect/ Zaha Hadid / Zaha Hadid Architects
Baan, I. (n.d.). Guangzhou Opera House [Digital image]. Retrieved February 7, 2021, from https://iwan.com/portfolio/guangzhou-opera-house-china-zaha-hadid-patrik-shumacher/
The Guangzhou Opera House has a 1,800 seat auditorium for theatrical plays as well as symphonies due to its cutting-edge acoustic technology. A smaller 400 seat multifunction hall functions as a smaller more intimate space for many different artistic expositions.
Architectural Plans
Other Sources
Grand Theater Urbanism: Chinese Cities in the 21st Century
Charli Qiuli Xue, Springer 2019
In this book the Xue talks about how the Guangzhou is the third largest city in China and wanted to have something that set it apart from both Shanghai and Beijing’s opera houses. Thus they had a international competition to choose which design would be best suited for the area. They ended up choosing Zaha Hadid Architects “two pebble” design. The author also mentions that the budget for the building was 120 million but the total cost needed up being 200 million. Any news of corruption about the building was censored in the local news. The outer “skin” of the building made up of the stone was flawed during building because the building company did not seal the stones correctly and had trouble doing some of the angular stonework. This led to leaking in the lobby of the building and some other areas. Xue writes that this is a clear example of where architecture and politics sometimes collide. The rest of the building however, was built very well and the auditorium’s acoustic technology was revered by architects around the world.
Ding, Guanghui. (2019). Guangzhou Opera House: Building a Gated Public Space. 10.1007/978-981-13-7868-3_3.
Inventing the Opera House: Theater Architecture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy
Eugene J. Johnson, Cambridge University Press 2018
In this book I learned a little bit about what theatre architecture is and what a more classical theater looks like. Johnson makes the case that the auditorium in the Guangzhou Opera House has many characteristics of a baroque theater. One of those is the heavenly attachments on the roof that are the lights that shine like stars in the dimly lit auditorium. The second is the echoing of shape from the ceiling down to the floor all following a general shape and rhythm much like baroque theaters from the 1500’s.
Johnson, E. (2018). Inventing the Opera House: Theater Architecture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108377669
Building Sketch
A top-up sketch of the Opera House surrounded by its public grounds and a couple of the commercial buildings nearby. This sketch shows you how the “two pebbles” sit in front of the Pearl River and while being very sharp and angular still seems to fit in well to the surrounding buildings, structures and space. On the right of the opera house you can see more angular structures as you cross the river.
Google Earth Observations
One observation from viewing the building in google earth is noticing that is has a prominent position over the river. It is in an urban area that is incredibly dense. It also is located next to a very large residential area as well as business district. The opera house is surrounded by lots of green space and large promenades. The opera house also seems to divide the roads as there are circular roads on each side which is very interesting. The north side spills on to a nearby highway. This also means that the opera house is easily accessible from both directions.
First Hand Experience
I spoke to my friend Jailun Dai that has been living in Beijing for 3 years now where he goes to university. He told me about his experience visiting the outside of the grounds of the opera house in 2016. He said that it was an amazing building that looked futuristic but not in a way that made it stand out too much or felt out of place. He said that the parks surrounding the opera house were also nice and very spread out.
New York Times Review
In the New York Times Review of the Guangzhou Opera House by Nicolai Ouroussoff he writes that “the Guangzhou Opera House is a monument to a particular crossroads in China’s history, as well as to Ms. Hadid’s stellar career.” And I can agree with that statement. China is a country that is still experiencing cultural growing pains and mainly due to the fact that they are just coning to this more sense of modernist architecture. However, this new push for a different type of architecture is still very evident due to the fundamentally flawed build quality of large parts of the building largely due to the use of unskilled migrant workers.
Ouroussoff, N. (2011, July 05). Chinese gem that elevates its setting. Retrieved February 09, 2021, from https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/06/arts/design/guangzhou-opera-house-designed-by-zaha-hadid-review.html
The Guardian’s Dame Zaha Hadid obituary
In the Guardian article by Deyan Sudjic looking into Zaha Hadid’s life I learned many interesting things. The first is that she should have had her breakthrough in 1994 when she won an international competition to design the new opera house in Cardiff Bay, however, the Millennium Commission denied the funding for the building. It was later built by an unrenowned architect and was not very iconic. Secondly, Zaha Hadid worked mostly in an old-school kind of way designing on paper with a pencil and ruler. Although she was old school she did keep up with the more modern practices of computing and design. And this is largely the reason she was able to start designing much more intricate shaped buildings. Lastly, her firm went from 25 employees to 400 by the time of her passing.
Sudjic, D. (2016, April 01). Dame Zaha hadid obituary. Retrieved February 09, 2021, from https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/apr/01/zaha-hadid-obituary
Guangzhou Opera House 