Provincial ambition

June 2010, Silkroad Magazine, Hong Kong

Architecture has long had the unique power to define and revive a city, but never before in such a lucrative way. Thanks to trade and tourism, a well-branded city these days is often a wealthy one. Such was the thinking of the Guangzhou administration when it made architecture the cornerstone of the province’s new image, and early in the decade launched a string of international design competitions for cultural landmarks in the Zhujiang New Town development, its emerging commercial centre. Among these the most ambitious have been an opera house by UK-based architect Zaha Hadid - a project which stretched both China’s confidence and its engineering prowess to the limit - and a museum from Hong Kong’s Rocco Yim, which raised the bar for meaningful contemporary Chinese architecture. Both have managed to blend a sense of depth and heritage with one of exciting modernity, while creating a satisfying global buzz about the province.

Guangzhou Opera House
Zaha Hadid Architects

When Zaha Hadid’s design was chosen for the Guangzhou Opera House in 2002, her name was established but her success was not at all secure. It was two years before she won the Pritzker Prize (commonly called ‘the architect’s Nobel’) and though she was admired for her futuristic visions, less than half of her designs had ever been built. She was an ‘on-paper’ architect; a rising and controversially rebellious architectural star, and above all, a risk.

The design did her reputation justice. Sleek, curvaceous and typically space-age, it had no wall vertical to the ground, surfaces at every angle and not one cross section the same. The building was an engineer’s nightmare and a potentially formidable exercise in precision manufacturing at the foundry.

When the owners’ committee took the brave step of opening the final designs to the public, the Flames of Passion by Austrian studio, Coop Himmelblau was thought to be the front runner. Yet Hadid’s humbly-named ‘double-pebbles’ design had caught the public imagination. The concept had been taken from a large, smooth-worn coral formation on the Pearl River bed, which is the subject of a famous old folk song and myths involving treasure hordes, not to mention the reason for the river’s name. The public appeared to appreciate the symbolism of an opera house embedded pebble-like into the river bank, standing in contrast to the Guangzhou skyscrapers, while the connection to the 'pearl' inspired a surge of civic pride.

The design is strongly geological but also typically futuristic, with two main jutting curves creating the silhouette of two boulders. According to the studio, the soaring contours - comprised of 10,000 tons of steel and 5,100 pieces of glass - are meant to ‘resonate the high notes’ of Chinese opera, and these are visible from both inside and outside of the building. The larger boulder features a performance hall for 1,800, with fifty dressing rooms and twelve balconies, with the smaller containing a 400-seat theatre. A café, bar and shops are found between the two in a main-street style thoroughfare.   

Yet realising the design caused a number of unexpected problems and fuelled more than a few headlines, particularly when it was publicised, during construction, that the process was more complex that Beijing’s famous Olympic ‘Birds nest’ stadium. The engineering challenges increased the cost and building delays. Even when the main building was complete, Hadid refused all efforts by sound engineers to modify her interior design to allow for traditional acoustics techniques. Only after a stubborn standoff did an award-winning sound engineer from New Zealand step forward with a technique never-before tried, which would allow them to keep the dramatic dips and curves of the hall’s walls and ceiling. The resulting structure may have originally defied belief, but it now stands as a testament to faith, team work, and a significant stubborn streak.  

Guangdong Museum
Rocco Design Architects Limited

Despite stiff international competition, Hong Kong architectural veteran Rocco Yim had the clear edge when his design for the Guangdong Museum was singled out in 2004. His hometown had proven a good cultural launching pad into the province, where the administration had requested a new museum that could capably document its history, while adding to the cultural identity of its capital city.  “In a way [Guangdong] is very similar to Hong Kong - a melting pot of cultures. Guangzhou was also one of the earlier port cities that opened its doors to the West,” he explains. “Hong Kong has succeeded Guangzhou and preserved many cultural aspects of the principal culture. From that perspective, we see a mirrored self.”

Since the building was completed last year it has been feted as a dynamic, meaningful example of a building with a strong Chinese character. Last year the Hong Kong Institute of Architects gave it the medal of the year for a project outside of Hong Kong, acclaiming its unusual blend of bold contemporary ideas and indigenous overtones.

The concept seems deceptively simple on the surface. As the grand architectural interpretation of an antique lacquer box it sends signals of value, preservation and culture that sit well with the function of a museum. The glass and aluminium geometric shapes and recessed voids in the facade also give it an intriguingly secretive character, which helps to pull in its audience. Yet Yim is a designer of the cerebral variety, and though the museum’s glamour may have endeared it to the general public, architects and awards committees were won over by its quieter complexities.

It may seem solid and imposing from the outside, but inside the five-storey museum almost dissolves into an intricate series of clean white spaces. Negotiating them is meant to feel a little like being inside an intricately-carved Chinese ivory ball. Interwoven passages, pockets and alcoves - some transparent, some flooded with natural light - draw visitors further into the centre, providing intimate rest spaces, and offering a flexible combination of traditional galleries rooms and larger loft-style exhibition halls.

 “The design attempts to express a Chinese character embedded in the modernity and simplicity of the spatial concept, that is at once recognisable but refreshingly new,” Yim has explained, in his typical architect’s vernacular. “The part that relates it to the local area’s culture lies in the subtlety of the details and the apparent understated grandiose of space, which I deliberately composed to look simple from the outset, but progressively gaining richness and weight in depth.” Or in a nutshell: a deft balance of finesse with function.