The Shanxi Grand Theater / Arte Charpentier Architectes

The project of the Shanxi opera house in Taiyuan, designed by Arte Charpentier Architectes, is at the heart of challenges such as the rapid development of the city and imposing reflections on its planning and scope. Situated in the new district of Changfeng, in the heart of a green island, it participates in the creation of a new centrality for the city. More images and project description after the break.

The gate of Taiyuan

Taiyuan is situated in the province of Shanxi in the northeast of China. In the center of a basin overhung by two mountains ranges – the Lüliang Mountains to the west and the Taihang Mountains to the east.

An urban sculpture

This building is composed of a hall with 1,600 seats in the north part of the building and two halls with 1,000 and 600 seats in the south part. For the halls and the interior core of the building, the work of the architects of Arte Charpentier Architectes covered the rationality and purity of the volumes. The metal skin of the building has been designed to play with light while reflecting the lights of the sky in a sensitive and varied way. The building is thus designed like an urban sculpture, ordering and qualifying all the surrounding space. It thus becomes an element of social and urban identity, both an iconic building for the city and a place of appropriation for the inhabitants.

An open stage

The particularity of the building is to be a kind of theatre opening onto the town. Through the arrangement of a window in the heart of the building, this itself becomes an open stage. Shows can then take place on the esplanade created under the building, thus offering a prospect from the Town Hall square and a view of the river. This «window» then contributes to enhancing the building within the whole urban composition.

Publication material via v2com.