Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel's studio has unveiled its proposal for a giant opera house on the waterfront in Shenzhen, China, which will be covered by a curving roofscape.
The Shenzhen Opera House is designed by Ateliers Jean Nouvel as a 220,000-square-metre cultural landmark for the Shekou Peninsula, a site overlooking Shenzhen Bay.
Above: Shenzhen Opera House will be built on the Shekou Peninsula. Top image: it is designed to enhance the existing promenade
Once complete, it will stretch out along the waterfront and count a 2,300-seat opera hall, a 1,800-seat concert theatre and an 800-seat venue for operettas among its many facilities.
According to the studio the architectural design is intended to establish a connection to the sea, celebrating the city's history as a fishing village and its existing promenade. It is designed to connect with the surrounding water
"Shenzhen has always been in harmony with the South China Sea," explained Nouvel. "The Opera House will welcome and incorporate the sea. They will bolster each other, bond."
"The promenade will be enhanced," he continued. "The arrival of the Opera House will create a long sequence along a coastline that has already been diversified over a stretch more than a kilometre long."
It will be topped by a curving roofscape
Ateliers Jean Nouvel's design was the winning entry of an invited international architecture competition for the opera house. Other entrants in...