Awe-Inspiring Harbin Opera House in China by MAD Architects.

Located in the northern Chinese city of Harbin, this MAD Architect’s creation is an exceptional beauty. Fluid and sinuous in form, the intersection between landscape and built form is intentionally blurred ever so beautiful and operatically. The connection between music, theatre and an intentional escape from the rigid reality of business and the daily life, is ever so apparent, and so handsomely conceived. Offering over 80,000 square meters of built area that’s able to accommodate over 1600 patrons, with 400 in a smaller theatre, the Harbin Opera House is a thing of absolute awe.

Formally, the main influences are the contextual site conditions, history and the rural city’s natural and unruly wilderness and climatic conditions. This northern area of China is known for its extreme winds and consequent sculptural landscapes, shaped by those winds. This Opera House is a veritable nod to that heritage and the forces of nature at play. Clad conclusively in white aluminium panels, the seamless nature of these scales creates a push-pull affect with the neighbouring typography and terrain. The way in which each piece of the façade interconnects with the next appears completely seamless, evoking a sense of poetic effortlessness.

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The organic nature of the building as a whole, as an external skin, transfers not just through to the landscape and master-planning efforts, but also to the interiors. The intentional space planning embodies that same sense of flow as the exterior. There is almost a cocoon-type space created through this wrapping of spaces and materiality. The use of warm natural materials within also aids in the crafted sense of belonging, the arrival, and the idea of being in the hearth of the space; at the core of the creation. Stone floors, curving glass walls and the canyon-like spaces create this deliberate warmth.

Based in Beijing, MAD has used all its cards on this one, utilising all available technology to bring this futuristic vision to life. Opened in 2015, an engineering, documentation and design feat, the Harbin Opera House is beyond its time, and ever so beautifully so. Huge nods to MAD Architects and all visionaries involved; truly worthy of a standing ovation.

[Images courtesy of Hufton + Crow & Adam Mork.]