The Wuxi Taihu Show Theatre, which is wrapped in a steel structure designed to look like a bamboo forest, has opened in China.
The theatre in Wuxi, a city near Shanghai in eastern China, was designed by Steven Chilton Architects as the permanent home for a water show designed by Belgian theatre director Franco Dragone.

The round theatre takes its appearance directly from the nearby Sea of Bamboo Park ? the largest bamboo forest in China, where West-Line Studio created a bamboo-clad gateway earlier this year.
"If you grow up in the region the Sea of Bamboo Park will be a familiar back drop to family days out and school trips and is a favoured spot for romantics," said Steven Chilton, principal of London-based Steven Chilton Architects. "I became aware of it years before as the location of the famous tree-top fight scene from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and was struck then by the incredible spatial qualities of the bamboo forest," he told Dezeen.

The building contains a 2,000-seat theatre at its centre, wrapped in a painted masonry and full-height glazing wall.
Surrounding this core is a screen of angled steel columns that are arranged to visually break up the mass of the theatre.

"The budget allowed us to have 365 columns to play with whilst our goal was to visually break up the view of the inner drum of the theatre building as frequently as possible," said Chilton.

"I've always admired the work of Andy Goldsworthy and sought to e...