The new Grand Theatre and International Culture & Art Center is located in the Daheexi District on the northeastern side of the newly created Changsha Meixi Lake.
The beautiful landscape scenery of Meixi Lake drives the overall concept of the project by positioning the architectural elements like precious objects into an urban Chinese garden where the elements of water, stones, hills, bridges and flowers are transformed into significant urban shapes animating and vitalizing the daily life of the entire Daheexi District. The proposal therefore “thickens” up the surface of the ground and transforms it into a flexible and lively landscape integrating all the service and leisure facilities to provide an attractive and continuously active support for this dedicated cultural site. The naturally shaped waves of the garden on the roof also provide sport and recreation possibilities that also include refreshing water surfaces and allow light and air to pass through into the building a controlled way.
Directly on the ground and on the landscaped roof surfaces a pedestrian walkway system interweaves the individual building parts with the garden landscape and the important infrastructural hubs like the subway station of line 2 at the northwest corner of the new development. An open air stage on Ceremony Island seamlessly merges with the connecting bridges to provide a one-of-a-kind functional layout for a bridge.
Following the walkway in the western direction it offers access to the optional Office and Apartment Extensions and finally to the optional 5-star highrise Hotel at the Western end of the site. The left wing of the Open Air Stage bridges from West to East connecting the bar and restaurant of the Grand Theater which can be accessed by the public. The walkway extends to the East over the garden landscape to link the lecture halls, exhibition spaces & the Art Training Center. The waterfront promenade closes the loop between the west and east end of the development opening with a generous plaza in front of the Grand Theater.
The Grand Foyer reflects and highlights all of the advanced aspects of an Opera House with bridges, stairs and platforms already performing as a 3-dimensional pre-stage to the Grand Hall. The state of the art equipped Opera Hall provides a multifunctional layout to easily switch between eastern and western as well as traditional and modern stage designs. In the evening the Grand Theater impresses viewers as an eye catcher, glowing in light and communicating the performance inside to the outside, and all over Meixi Lake.
The philosophy of the low energy design of the “Meixi Lake Culture & Art Center” is to create buildings which require less energy through highly efficient passive energy systems to reduce the energy consumed, and finally by providing alternative energy sources within the design.
Team
Planning:
COOP HIMMELB(L)AU
Wolf D. Prix / W. Dreibholz & Partner ZT GmbH
Design Principal: Wolf D. Prix
Design Partner: Karolin Schmidbaur
Project Partner: Wolfgang Reicht
Senior Project Coordinator: Lei Feng
Project Architect: Veronika Janovska
Design Architects: Alexander Ott, Giulio Polita, Quirin Krumbholz
Project Team: Johannes Elias, Tamara Soto, Xinyu Wan,
Sofia Sorazabal, Dingliang Yang, Keming Wang, Masha Hupalo,
Giacomo Tinari, Anne Vangsgaard, Martin Jelinek, Megan Lepp,
Sarah Miller, Ivo de Nooijer, Lukas Neumann, Simone Brandstätter
Graphics: Jan Rancke, Anja Sorger
Model Building: Sebastian Buchta, Nam La Chi
3D visualization: Isochrom, Steven Ma, Cynthia Morales Sanchez
Photography: Markus Pillhofer
Structural engineering:
B+G Ingenieure / Bollinger und Grohmann GmbH
Prof. Klaus Bollinger
Energy / Environmental Design: Büro Happolt
Acoustics: M BBM
Client: Changsha Meixihu Industrial Co., Ltd.
