Pingshan Performing Arts Center by OPEN Architecture

After winning a competition to design the first theater in Pingshan, a new district in the municipality of Shenzhen, Beijing-based OPEN Architecture had the opportunity to take a critical look at the past development of theaters in China, and to explore new possibilities for the future.

With support from the client, firm principals Li Hu and Huang Wenjing ‘re-designed’ the original program, which only called for a grand theater. Performing-arts-related educational and social programs were added, as well as a restaurant and a café. A public promenade and a series of gardens accessible to all were designed to be interwoven with the architecture. Serving as a new cultural hub, it also provides the non-theater-going public with an exceptional and unusual urban space.

Watch a video of the project below: