Macao magazine, by Mark O'Neill, photo by Eric Tam

The design of "Moon Scallop" was created. Moon Scallop, also known as "long rib Moon Scallop" in science, is a local specialty in the Pearl River Delta. This beautiful shell is all over the coastline of Zhuhai.

Zhuhai opera house project is located on Yeli island in Xiangzhou Bay, facing the mountain and listening to the sea, separated by a bridge from the prosperous urban area. It covers an area of 57680 square meters. The opera house includes two large and small theaters, which are in the shape of sun and moon, also known as "big shell" and "small shell". The big shell is 90 meters high. It contains a 1550 seat concert hall, a hall, an auditorium and a stage. The small shell is 60 meters high and contains a 500 seat theater. The project has a total construction area of 59000 square meters and an investment of 1.08 billion yuan.

"The completion of this project makes me very happy," Professor Chen said. "The opera house will bring immeasurable value to Zhuhai and make the city internationally famous. It will become a symbol of the city, just like the Sydney Opera House, attracting tourists and opera lovers from all over the world. It will stand there forever."

Professor Chen graduated from the school of architecture of Tsinghua University and obtained a doctorate from the school of Social Sciences of the University of Edinburgh. In the past 12 years, he has led more than 100 graduate students and designers to complete more than 50 large-scale projects in Shenzhen. Professor Chen is also the director and doctoral supervisor of China Urban Design Research Center of Peking University.

From the initial architectural design scheme bidding to the final project completion, it is a long and bumpy road, spanning eight years. Now the finished creation is finally in front of us. What Professor Chen feels is a kind of relief and happiness. "In eight years, a person can become a doctor from a high school student. A lot of things can happen. The same is true for this project. Many things will change, personnel changes, company and opinion differences. The biggest difficulty is to build it."


 
Professor Chen first visited Zhuhai nine years ago and was invited as an expert to be responsible for the site selection of the opera house. The municipal government hopes to make a major cultural investment, so it finally chose a reclamation area to build the opera house.

Subsequently, Zhuhai conducted a global bidding, which attracted bids from 33 internationally renowned architects and firms from the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Switzerland and other countries, including Paul Andrew, who designed the National Grand Theater in Beijing, and Herzog, who designed the famous bird's nest in the capital.

The chairman of the selection committee invited Professor Chen to also submit a design proposal. Although Professor Chen has been the chief designer of several major projects in China, such as Lulang international tourism town in Tibet, an important project supported by the Guangdong Provincial Government in Tibet, He also designed the "China dream - Shenzhen Bay super headquarters" scheme, but Professor Chen was not the most popular candidate for opera house designer at that time. "I didn't expect to be responsible for the design and construction of Zhuhai opera house at that time, but this idea aroused my interest." With the inspiration of these two scallops, Professor Chen and the team submitted their designs.

Professor Chen's design was selected as one of the top nine in the first round of selection. At that time, he and the team were very satisfied. Two weeks later, he was shortlisted in the top three. "The top three design schemes were put on the Internet and invited the people of Zhuhai to vote together. The first design scheme was pointed out to have copied a war memorial hall in Pearl Harbor, so the scheme was out, and our scheme was successfully elected as the first prize."

The structure of opera houses is very complex, so it is notoriously difficult to design, and most of China's existing opera houses are designed by foreign architects. "This is the first time that a Chinese architect won the bid for the design of the opera house. We won for three reasons: our unique creativity and artistic inspiration, and our deep relationship with Zhuhai."


 
Professor Chen's ambitious design has also received considerable criticism. Some experts doubt the structural feasibility, while others doubt whether the design can withstand the typhoons that come every summer in Guangdong. However, the structure designed by Professor Chen's team has a service life of 100 years and can also withstand a tropical storm cyclone of magnitude 12, an earthquake of magnitude 8 and a wind pressure of 90 kPa. In order to make up for his lack of experience in building opera houses, Professor Chen visited more than 50 opera houses in international cities such as Paris, London and New York.

After the project started, Professor Chen encountered more obstacles. "I used to work in Hong Kong, where the chief designer was the real leader in controlling the whole project, but in mainland China, the reality is very different. The contractor will make changes to the other case. For example, we want to use Italian marble to build the outer wall of buildings. This kind of material selection is very common in Hong Kong. However, the contractor in charge of the project tends to use aluminum alloy materials. The interior decoration design has also encountered great difficulties Change. This is the system in mainland China. There is nothing we can do. "

Another design change is the addition of an underground mall with shops and restaurants. "Investors want to add some commercial buildings. You won't see these in the West. Western opera houses are purely artistic."

During the eight-year construction of Zhuhai opera house, several personnel changes have taken place in the leading group of Zhuhai municipal government, but the support for the project has never changed. A German company with experience in building an opera house in Berlin and involved in the construction of the Moscow Grand Theatre and the Copenhagen opera house designed the stage and backstage equipment. The structure of the Moon Scallop is made of 10000 tons of thin steel, which took 400 days to transform into two shell shapes (ordinary steel takes only two to three months). According to the award-winning scheme, the surface of the small shell is covered with LED lighting system, which is used to project the performance content in the opera house to the facade. The opera house will host large-scale performances such as symphony, chamber music, opera, ballet, musical and drama. The concert hall will hold art activities, fashion shows, art promotion and company meetings. Above the concert hall is a sightseeing floor, with a restaurant, a bar and a fashion show.

During the eight years of construction, many Zhuhai people were skeptical and even thought that the opera house would not be built. Zhuhai has a population of only 1.5 million, of which only a small number can afford to watch a high-quality opera or concert. "All opera houses rely on subsidies to survive," Professor Chen said, "This is very normal for high-end art performances. Traditional Chinese opera declined sharply a few years ago. On the contrary, Western opera has been welcomed by Chinese audiences. However, in the past two years, traditional Chinese opera has regained its luster. The construction of this project is for the public interest, so it is impossible to only consider commercial returns. Its impact will be great and will attract foreign tourists."

Professor Chen believes that the building will create great value for Zhuhai, a coastal tourist city, because his design is adjacent to the sea, "When the sun rises in the East, it looks very beautiful and charming in the moonlight. Culture is equal to competitiveness. Some cities are very rich, but they are not famous because they have nothing famous. Why do thousands of people flock to Paris and New York? Because the culture there is eternal. Britain used to make cameras first. Later, Japan learned the technology of making cameras from Britain, and the camera industry moved to New York Japan. The Germans made the earliest cars, and now we Chinese can also make cars. But only culture is eternal. "

Successive leaders of Zhuhai have supported the opera house project. Vice Mayor long Guangyan believes that the opera house has special cultural significance and local spirit. It not only shows the romantic side of Zhuhai, but also enhances the attraction of the city. "This will be a very culturally powerful city," she predicted. Zhuhai opera house will attract tourists from Hong Kong, Macao and the Pearl River Delta, thus expanding Zhuhai's influence in the whole region.