6 design entries for SZ Opera House selected

Six designs for the Shenzhen Opera House have been selected by a panel of judges, consisting of well-known architects from home and abroad, at a meeting that ended Saturday.

He Jingtang, member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and chief architect with Architecture Design Institute of South China University of Technology, served as the chairman of the panel.

The six design institutions are required to further finalize their designs and hand them to the judging panel within a month. The final design will be selected from the six candidates after considering the opinions of the public and experts, a report of Shenzhen Economic Daily said yesterday.

The city had started seeking creative design proposals from all over the world for the Shenzhen Opera House, one of the city’s 10 new cultural facilities, earlier in January. It adopted a selection mode of “global invitation + open bidding.”

Eight design institutions with achievements in the field of international public facility design were invited to participate in the competition.

The eight invited design institutions are Ateliers Jean Nouvel, Calatrava International LLC, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Herzog & de Meuron World Ltd. + CCDI, Snohetta, Steven Holl Architects, Renzo Piano Building Workshop and China Architecture Design & Research Group.

The city also received a dozen of design proposals from other bidding companies.

Shenzhen Opera House will be built in the Dongjiaotou area of Shekou, Nanshan District. With a construction area of 222,000 square meters, plans consist of a core performance area, a supporting functional area and a public service and cultural and creative experience area.

The Shenzhen Opera House aims to be a world-class performing arts center, a new platform for international cultural exchanges in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and a top tourist destination in the world.