HANGZHOU YUHANG OPERA
AUDITORIA 2020 VOLUME ONE 33
Drawings: Henning Larsen. Photos: Philippe Ruault
walls. The amount of glass increases towards
the front of the building, providing nearly total
transparency for the public foyers.
“The ice-ray façade does three jobs,” explains
May. “Where the concrete walls on either side
of the foyer move upward, the openings are
placed and oriented to reduce the weight of
concrete in the cantilever. By putting holes
in particular locations, it actually made those
concrete cantilevers more efficient.”
The corners of the building’s front façade are
reinforced with additional steel bracing, which
is an unusual structural solution.
“Typically most buildings that don’t cantilever
out over a lake would have a primary structural
system supporting the floors and roof and
another supporting the façade,” says May. “Here
the primary is also the secondary structure. It’s
supporting the floors, the stairs and balconies
inside that atrium void in the foyer, and that
in turn is suspended from the cantilevered façade
walls. The façade structure itself spans across as
a big mega-structure truss.” n
EAST MEETS WEST
The Hangzhou Yuhang Opera, where Henning Larsen Architects
worked in partnership with the Hangzhou Architecture & Civil
Engineering Design Institute, typifies the opportunities and
challenges in Western and Chinese firms working together
on large-scale cultural venues.
“You can find it hard to communicate on some things, but
Chinese clients can be quite adventurous when it comes to
architecture of grand scale,” comments Claude Godefroy of
Henning Larsen Architects. “These companies understand
the need for bold moves. I don’t think we could have built this
in the West; it might be perceived as too difficult. China is quite
a good place to experiment with stage and theatre design
and theatre planning.”
Differences in language and construction methods were
addressed in part by using three-dimensional building
integrated management (BIM) software shared by all
members of the building team. “BIM gave us a rich platform
to communicate with the local design institute,” explains
Rob May of BuroHappold. “Their bread and butter isn’t big
cantilevering buildings and inclining slabs. Conveying the
design in a manner that while complicated, can be broken
down to its component parts, was quite important.”