In 2002, the municipality of Guangzhou launched an invitation-only architectural competition to design an Opera House—a cultural landmark to reflect Guangzhou’s rising global profile. The brief called for an iconic building on Pearl River’s east bank, intended to harmonise the emerging financial skyline with the adjacent riverside landscape. Zaha Hadid Architects’ winning proposal fulfilled these ambitions through a design that merged natural context, cultural functions and advanced building technology.
Their design concept originated in the metaphor of ‘two pebbles’weathered by the river current, evoking a sense of fluidity embedded within the landscape. This early study model articulates the formal logic of the main auditorium building, with its faceted shell made of triangulated paper surfaces. It suggests its exterior cladding design while recalling the form of natural geology. The numbered panels on the model reflect the project’s complex assembly system, realised as a steel-framed skin of glass and granite.
Hadid described Guangzhou Opera House as one of the first projects ZHA designed as a ‘total topography’, influenced by two of their earlier waterfront redevelopments: the Zollhof 3 Media Park in Düsseldorf (1989–93) and the Rheinauhafen Redevelopment in Cologne (1992). Both schemes rejected a conventional single-podium composition in favor of a built environment driven by the landscape, where the architecture emerges in response to the riverside topography. Furthermore, the auditorium’s interior harks back to Hadid’s unrealised Cardiff Bay Opera House (1994–96), particularly in its asymmetrical plan.
Design
Zaha Hadid
Project Director
Woody K.T. Yao and Patrik Schumacher
Project Leader
Simon Yu
Project Team
Jason Guo, Yang Jingwen, Long Jiang, Ta-Kang Hsu, Yi- Ching Liu, Zhi Wang, Christine Chow, Cyril Shing, Filippo Innocenti, Lourdes Sanchez, Hinki Kwong and Junkai Jian
Competition Team
1st Stage:
Filippo Innocenti, Matias Musacchio, Jenny Huang, Hon Kong Chee, Markus Planteu, Paola Cattarin, Tamar Jacobs, Yael Brosilovski, Viggo Haremst, Christian Ludwig, Christina Beaumont, Lorenzo Grifantini, Flavio La Gioia, Nina Safainia, Fernando Vera, Martin Henn, Achim Gergen, Graham Modlen and Imran Mahmood
2nd Stage:
Cyril Shing, YanSong Ma, Yosuke Hayano, Adriano De Gioannis and Barbara Pfenningstorff
