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Published in 5/2024 - Crossing the Borders
Third in China
The Nanchang Poly Grand Theatre is the centre of the metropolis’s new district and PES Architects’ third cultural building in China.
Nanchang Poly Grand Theatre
Architects Tuomas Silvennoinen, Jyri Eskola, Martin Lukasczyk, Kai Lindvall
Location Nanchang South New Town, Nanchang, China
Gross Area 45 000 m2
Completion 2024
More photos and drawings of the project →
There are few opening ceremonies of Chinese buildings that end up on Finland’s main news programme. At the opening of the Nanchang Poly Grand Theatre, however, the Yle’s Beijing correspondent is present, and the camera zooms in on the subdued greige ceramic veil of the building’s facade and pans over the curving bamboo of the opera house auditorium that glow a reddish-brown.
PES-Architects won the international architectural competition for the Nanchang Poly Grand Theatre in 2021. The building is the main attraction of the Nanchang South New Town area. In China it is typical that when the bullet train network expands a new district is built around the new station, as well as a cultural building, explain the building’s principal designer, architect Tuomas Silvennoinen and architect Jyri Eskola, who is the Development Director of PES Architects’ China office.
In addition to Helsinki, PES has had a branch office in Shanghai since 2010, and it is still the only Finnish architectural firm with a permanent office abroad. Winning the architectural competition for the Wuxi Grand Theatre in 2008 (completed 2012) established the office’s position in the country, followed by the Fuzhou Strait Culture and Art Centre completed in 2018. The Nanchang Poly Grand Theatre is the third opera house completed in the country as a result of winning an invitational competition. “We have gradually become experts in cultural buildings in China”, says Silvennoinen.
An office and retail complex is being built next to the opera house. Opposite it is a park. These are connected by a route through the building which, in the architects’ vision, and unlike the norm in China, would be open even when there are no events in progress. Grouped around the route are a multi-purpose hall and rehearsal, teaching and commercial facilities as well as the main hall for an audience of 1,600, which is suitable for performing both Chinese and western opera and ballet but in practice also allows for many other activities.
The 45,000 square-metre cultural building is a huge project in Finnish terms: it would almost fit the Helsinki Music Centre and Kiasma combined, or one-and-a-half Tampere Halls. In China, however, the opera house is medium-sized, the architects explain.
How would you describe the opera house, Tuomas Silvennoinen and Jyri Eskola?
TS The opera house can be considered moderate in the Chinese building tradition – not modest, but moderate. There’s nothing crazy or silly or forced about it. It’s very intuitive.
JE I’d argue that’s also one of the reasons we won the competition. Over the past decade, more and more complex buildings have been built in China, which have been expensive both to build and use. We wanted to do something different. There are many levels of detail and beauty in the design, but the basic idea is clear.
How did you carry out the work between Finland and China?
TS The competition winner was announced in April 2021, so practically the entire design process was done during the pandemic. Interestingly, it facilitated the cooperation between Helsinki and Shanghai. In the past, it was customary to travel and be less connected between the trips, but now we met several times a week remotely. There were fewer site visits, but more video calls on the building site.
The work is divided organically between our offices. The Shanghai office has architects who produce competition material and concepts extremely skilfully and quickly. In Helsinki, on the other hand, there is a technical understanding of, for example, how to develop details. Martin Lukasczyk from the Helsinki office was responsible for the detail design and especially the opera hall together with Chinese acousticians.
Our assignment also included interior design, which is not a given in China. Often, the architect only does the massing and the facades and someone else determines what kind of floor and wall materials are used. Our interior design team at the Helsinki office, under the leadership of Kai Lindvall, has already been responsible for the interior design of several cultural buildings in China – much more extensive tasks than domestic interior design assignments.
JE The Chinese state always requires there to be a Chinese partner in the projects, and a foreign office is not allowed to produce construction drawings. Towards the end, the responsibility of the Chinese partner agency Biad (Beijing Institute of Architecture and Design) increased, but all their drawings also passed by us for our approval. Three and a half years after winning the competition, the building was completed.
Several internationally active architects have criticized China’s construction culture and, for example, the fact that the quality of construction there cannot be controlled all the way to the end. How have you been able to hold on to the control yourself and include also the finishings in the commission?
TS There are two reasons for this: we want to be actively involved in the planning of the entire project, and from the beginning we have been having discussions about the conditions under which it will be executed. In addition, we in our office have also designed furniture and even lighting fixtures, so we have references also for the finishes on a smaller scale. Not everyone in China has that.
JE Construction projects are much larger, and the schedules extremely strict are from a Finnish angle. Construction of the Nanchang Poly Grand Theatre began at the same time as the design, two months after winning the competition. Within half a year we had made the architectural design of the entire building. Then the interior design work began.
Due to the tight schedule, an architect must be able to understand what the soul of the design is; where we are ready to be flexible, and where not. We do a lot of analysis on what areas we need to focus more on to make the building look the way we want it to. Here, the facade veil was one of the things that was studied a lot through 1:1 scale models. On the other hand, sometimes you have to make decisions on the spot with only partial information. Patience is required from the architect, but also the ability to empathise.
TS When you have a strong underlying concept, you no longer need to think about it that much during the planning, but only about how to solve it in practice. The opera house looks similar to the competition illustrations. One must focus on the right things and make use of the Chinese partner who, nevertheless, bears the responsibility of making the major part of the plans.
For you, what is the very essence of the opera house – that is, what did you focus on?
TS We didn’t really have to compromise on anything. The most heated discussions concerned the bamboo surfaces of the main auditorium and the ceramic tiles of the facades. When we came up with the concept, we had the idea of a veil that wraps together the functions of the building, but the way of achieving that was not specified. In terms of the success of the architecture, it was crucial that the facade become porous.
JE The area is known for its Jiulong rice-grain ceramics, which is partially translucent. It was an important metaphor for the Chinese: the building is some kind of translucent ceramic object in the greater landscape.
TS A commendable aspect of Chinese construction culture is that stories are appreciated and actively contemplated. They are not the architect’s concoctions, but real things of substance for the clients as well.
On the other hand, the efficiency mindset is the same everywhere and solutions are challenged. The ceramic bars are now suspended on slender wires, but various heavier construction options were also considered.
JE China has the most advanced suspension bridges in the world, which as an analogy that eventually convinced the client.
Another important aspect for us has been to bring natural Chinese materials into our language of modern architecture. Traditional natural materials have been somewhat forgotten in modern construction in China. For example, the bamboo surface of the main hall was discussed at length: at one point, the client was of the opinion that we could also use artificial materials, because it would look the same. However, the sensory experience is not the same. When you walk into the hall, you feel like you’re walking into a musical instrument. The hall has many of the same features as we are currently designing for the Turku Music Hall, but in spruce.
What in the building was most important for the client?
JE Genuinely, the most important thing was that the building was completed on schedule. In the Finnish context, it is difficult to understand that when something has been decided politically, it is done even if it has to be by force. Of course, it also has to look good and work, otherwise everyone will lose face.
TS If we talk about aesthetics, the narrative about ceramics was important. A pet peeve In Chinese architecture is that the illustrations and stories are great, but you are unable or unwilling to take it all the way to implementation. In our work, on the other hand, the stories end up taking something of a back seat when we discuss the construction, and how we can make it good. It even created a minor conflict.
There was also an interesting discussion at the mayoral level about one sharp outer corner of the building. The mayor’s administration was of the opinion that due to fengshui, the corner cannot be sharp, because it points badly towards the intersection. A small opening was made in the veil to make the corner look more open. That settled a debate that had lasted a couple of months. In Finland, such discussions about the architectural content would perhaps be held with the building control authority, not exactly with the client.
Why does PES want to operate specifically in China? What do you get out of such projects?
TS Where else can you build three opera houses in ten years? In China, you get the opportunity to do things that you can’t do otherwise.
JE In China one can use customized solutions that would be exceptional in a Finnish context. For example, craftsmanship is still available. We can truly aim for a total work of art in the sense it was a hundred years ago.
TS I see also that it is culturally valuable in itself to operate in other countries and to be in a dialogue with other cultures through the means of architecture. It is not a question about business or construction. Architecture, like all interpersonal work, is a service profession. How to act with others, respect ideas, understand oddities and solve problems is also an export product. We don’t go to teach or show others how good we are, but we go to solve other people’s problems by interacting with them.
What has PES as an office learned from China that can be applied in Finland or elsewhere?
TS The biggest lesson came at the very beginning, when we started operating in China some 20 years ago – suddenly a third of the architects in our office were foreign, and we started working with 3D modelling. Throughout this time, foreign architects have also participated in Finnish projects. The work of an architect in other offices in Finland has only become like this much later.
How has China’s slowing economy in recent years affected your work?
JE There are a lot of new cultural buildings in China. We are reaching a situation in which western countries are already, that is, we are no longer building new things but repairing the old. On the other hand, China has 145 cities with more than a million inhabitants, so construction will certainly continue, but there will be less of it, it will be done more carefully and on a smaller scale.
TS The competition is tougher. We will have to give some serious thought on what opportunities there are for us to continue in China. In addition to the construction slump, we are also affected by the general atmosphere and how China treats foreign operators.
JE The big change was the pandemics. China shut down the entire country and the economic effects are now visible. China is now trying to open up again, but two-thirds of Shanghai’s foreign population, for example, have already moved away.
We have participated in dozens of competitions in China in recent years. But now we have stopped because, due to the economic situation, they will not progress to completion, even if we win. At the moment we are carrying out, for instance, renovation work, and we are looking for new opportunities close to China.
TS For example, we are currently doing a museum competition in Vietnam. You can operate with the same ethos in nearby areas. However, it’s not a good idea to start doing just anything, such as office buildings or apartments, which many other people know how to do.
Exporting is hard work that requires investment. We haven’t gone to China just to build one opera house, but we’ve done a lot of things, from which this work has emerged. ↙