The East Coast New Town is a key area outside of Xiamen Island that plays a crucial role in building Xiamen into an international, modern city of quality and beauty. The Xiamen Cultural Complex is designed to provide high end cultural activities to local citizens and tourists, filling the blank of tourism products that Xiamen has to offer.
The competition design contains a series of buildings whose organic forms are based on the concept of tides and water flow. Xiamen is a coastal city with strong tidal movement, which also represents a pioneering spirit inherited from Min’nan culture and history.
The complex contains three main parts: the Opera House on the Sea, the Xiamen Gallery, and commercial facilities including a theme hotel. The two sets of streamlined buildings, symmetrically situated on either side of the main platform, stage, and multi-purpose hall, organically flow into the main auditorium. Viewed from the sea, the collection of spaces is unified in form.
The main body of the 4,500-seat streamlined auditorium serves as the centerpiece of the building complex with the overall symmetry directing the visitor’s eye to the center of the Main Stage. The core, occupying the north-facing water interface of the plot, is designed as a dignified gesture, showing the new city to the world and creates a humanistic atmosphere for cultural feathers of the theater.
The North Auditorium, situated on a sea stage that represents a waterscape, is like a bright moon, floating on the water. The raised lake and the open water surfaces of the east and west streams merge into one, forming an open and shocking experience that truly reveals the vision of the sea stage. The design of the landscape flows through the building forms like the Xiamen tide. The surge is manifested artificially and naturally through the site, perfectly fused together forming a surging sea. The Landscape is surrounded by sea on all sides, and the field is surrounded by flowing light bands through the site.
This building complex will create an important atmospheric image and unique sightseeing experience for the people of Xiamen and visitors from all over the world.
