Structure, Material & Form Presentation Template

Structure, Material & Form

Guangzhou Opera House



Zaha Hadid’s design won the first prize and was confirmed as the practical one which will become an icon for the Guangzhou City and even accelerate the urbanization of new developing downtown.

Key Features:• The third biggest opera architecture in China.• One opera hall (includes main stage, side

stage, and back stage) 1,800 seats.• One multiple-purpose hall with 400 seats.• Foyer, art gallery, restaurant, garage.• 70,000 square meters (30,000 square meters

underground).• Total construction investment of 200 million

dollars

Design Review:• Create a new focal point in Guangzhou city.• Located downstream of Peal River.• Its unique twin boulder design enhances urban

function with open access to the riverside and dock areas.

• Create a new dialogue with the emerging new town.

• The sheltered area formed in its intersection has been designed to accommodate outdoor activities to complement its primary role as a world stage for the performing art

16-09-2014 3Structure, Material & Form


The structure was designed by the Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, its independent auditorium, of concrete, located within a bold exposed granite and glass, coated with a steel frame, needed over five years to build, and was praised following its initiation architecture critic Jonathan Glancey in the Guardian, who defined as "both, highly theatrical and insistently subtle".



Architect Zaha Hadid gave shape to this structure so that resembled two stones on the bank of Pearl River. The design of the Opera House is a unique exploration of contextual urban relationships Zaha Hadid Architects, combining the cultural traditions that have shaped the history of Guangzhou, with the ambition and optimism that will create its future.



The design evolved from the concepts of a natural landscape and the fascinating interplay between architecture and nature, agreeing with the principles of erosion, geology and topography. The design of the Guangzhou Opera has been particularly influenced by river valleys and how they are transformed by erosion.

Fold lines in this landscape define territories and zones within the Opera House, both inside and outside dramatic canyons for circulation, lobbies and cafes are created, allowing natural light to penetrate deep into the building. Smooth transitions between disparate elements and different levels continue this landscape analogy.

The larger “boulder”, clad in charcoal- coloured, rough-textured granite, houses the opera house while the white granite-clad smaller boulder houses the multipurpose, black box hall. Outside, one gazes up through a canyon between the two buildings; inside, the airy lobbies, staircases and undulating walls evoke flowing riverbeds; swooping angles suck the visitor in like a current.



ENVELOPE SYSTEMThe envelope system is of rigid frame structure for both the structures:Opera HallMulti-Purpose Hall• Both of them are the integrative Rigid Frame

Structure of slabs and curtain walls.• Deep steel trusses supporting roof, envelope and

ancillary equipments.• Asymmetric Horizontal Forces due to radical ribs to

be transformed to the ground via auditorium walls.



Hadid has also created a public park around the performance complex. You approach the main entry plaza up a ramp or grand staircase, past the smaller multipurpose hall; a second ramp spirals down to a smaller plaza and reflective pool, which offers shelter from Guangzhou’s hot and wet seasons. Escalators descend from both hall lobbies to this under-plaza, where ticketing, cafes and shops, including opera retail, are found.






Philips Pavilion Expo 58



The Philips Pavilion at Expo 58 in Brussels, Belgium, located in a small room next to the Dutch section and away from the centre of the fair, was built in an unusual architectural style and new at the time: the hyperbolic parabola. The design was done by Le Corbusier in collaboration with the Greek composer Iannis Xenakis, a young architect and engineer, working for Le Corbusier in those days. For this special occasion, the American composer Edgar Varèse composed a new poem Electronic, ELECTRONIQUE POÈME (1957), which would be heard during the days of exposure through 425 speakers at the same time you could watch a film made by Le Corbusier. The work was a combination of musique concrete and electronic sounds. Images and photographs were projected on the walls without any attempt to sync with the sound.

From the very beginning Le Corbusier conceived the pavilion as an interior in which an electronic spectacle could be presented. He said: “I will not make a façade for Philips, but an electronic poem. Everything will happen inside: sound, light, color, rhythm … Perhaps a scaffolding will be the pavilion’s only exterior aspect.” He designed the plan of the pavilion in the shape of a stomach, a digestive organ, capable of absorbing the public, five hundred people at a time.



Every ten minutes, the pavilion “assimilated” five hundred spectators. And at the end of the spectacle, the spectators were “evacuated” automatically, possibly after having been “transformed.” Spectators remained standing during the eight-minute spectacle. Thus, this allowed the audience to experience the spectacle from all points.

The pavilion was designed to house a multimedia spectacle that celebrated post-war technological progress. The pavilion is a cluster of nine hyperbolic paraboloid in which music was spatialized by sound projectionists using telephone dials.



The Philips Pavilion represented an important artistic phenomenon through its synthesis of architecture, visual media and music. It was a great space in which slides were projected and the soundtrack of "Electronic Poem " specially prepared by Edgar Varèse was heard.

The purpose was to display the flag technology company Philips, a specialized Dutch electronics company, from sound production to fluorescent lighting for X-ray technology. Philips' goal was obviously promotional. But instead of having a traditional pavilion in which to display their products to visitors, Philips decided to create an integrated modern art work that would use its wide range of technologies. Therefore, the Philips pavilion did not exhibit itself, but it was kind of exhibition in itself, a showcase covering everything that Philips could offer.

To make the experience come through all the way had to be the work of a multidisciplinary team, an architect, an artist and a songwriter.



FORM CONCEPTAlthough Xenakis was the principal designer of the Philips Pavilion, architecture originated with the general concepts of Le Corbusier. The starting point for the structure was a series of curved hyperbolic planes parabaloides generated mathematically from straight lines that form an enclosure shaped store to cover the plant in the form of stomach.

Proposals by Xenakis sloping walls to cover the hyperbolic paraboloid planes satisfy the idea of Le Corbusier irregular warped surfaces for projecting images. The geometry also covered the wishes of Le Corbusier for mathematical rationality, while the spectacular slopes and contours of the flag associated with an expressionistic language.





The structure is made with a combination of steel and reinforced concrete structural system. The pre-stressing steel is attached to heavy concrete supports and the spaces between them are covered with thin precast. At the ends, wrapped steel masts cables that pull the structure. Complex shapes flag made it impossible to build a conventional poured concrete structure, the solution reached by Xenakis and his engineer Hoyte Duyster was to create a system of prefabricated concrete panels hung in tension steel cables. Because hyperbolic parabolic planes are generated by straight lines , the method of using prefabricated panels was easy to implement.

Structure, Material & Form Presentation Template

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