Modern classic
Main and inset: The complex
flowing sidewalls of the
1,600-seat opera hall were
shaped to optimize the
coverage of early reflections
for the entire audience
ACOUSTICS
KAHLE ACOUSTICS
A centuries-long tradition of ceramics production was the
inspiration for innovative acoustic design in China’s new
Fuzhou Strait Culture and Art Centre
Set on the
waterfront of
the Minjiang
River in the
Chinese city
of Fuzhou, the Fuzhou
Strait Culture and Art
Centre (SCAC) opened
its doors to audiences and
artists in October 2018.
The center is composed
of an intriguing cluster of
seven individual buildings
resembling a fleet of
sailboats, each housing
one venue, including
a 1,600-seat opera hall, a 1,000-seat symphony
hall, a 700-seat multifunction hall, an exhibition
hall for visual arts and a cinema.
Due to its proximity to the Taiwan
Strait, Fuzhou was historically a gateway for
international trade along the Maritime Silk
Road, enabling the city to develop a centurieslong
tradition of high-quality porcelain and
ceramics production. PES Architects renewed
and extended this tradition by making innovative
use of ceramics throughout the building, ranging
from baguette-shaped shading louvers on the
façades to acoustically shaped ceramic tiles
in the two larger performance halls:
white porcelain with an abstract
pattern for the symphony hall
and smaller, darker tiles
forming a floral pattern
inspired by jasmine
branches for the opera
hall. The Taiwanese
ceramist artist Samuel
Hsuan-yu Shih designed
the tiles using new
technology to pattern the
China White material.
The 1,600-seat opera hall features a freeform
interior, the complex surface geometry of which
is the result of close collaboration between
the architects and the acousticians. To achieve
excellent vocal and musical clarity and presence,
combined with rich reverberation, Kahle
Acoustics optimized the shaping of the hall
interior to generate early acoustic reflections
for all audience zones.
In many respects, the opera hall with its
three balconies can be seen as a contemporary
reinterpretation of the horseshoe paradigm,
in which the walls, balcony fronts, soffits and
columns, as well as the proscenium
zone, have been blended together
into a coherent, flowing 3D
sculpture. The curvature of
this complex, double-curved
and acoustically reflective
sculpture is highly
variable, including large
portions of acoustically
focusing concave surfaces.
Through an iterative
design process that included
many cycles of acoustic
104 AUDITORIA 2019 VOLUME ONE
Flowershaped
tiles
create a warm
sound, avoiding the
harshness that could
arise from using
flat ceramic
surfaces