Shanghai Grand Opera House
There isn’t hitherto any Opera House in the world that attempts to truly EXPRESS ARCHITECTURALLY, the emotion that opera produces in humans; the perfect symbiosis of an instinctive feeling that emanates from our organic nature, with a unique sensation of levitation, of “spiritual flotation”, that invades our minds.
Buildings based in banal metaphors of musical instruments are not valid anymore; neither are the ones relying in historical models. We cannot even appeal to the mannerist attempts of “even harder” stylistic exercises. We want to express, as abstractly and concisely as possible, the contrast between the telluric passion and the spiritual levitation that makes of an opera performance the most emotional and culturally intense experience that art is able to produce.
The Shanghai Grand Opera House will not follow any model, any banal figurative reading. On the contrary, it will require and generate an analogous commitment to the one of listening to opera, seeking to resonate with its experience, translated to the mineral language of architecture.
