Harbin Opera House Opens: MAD’s White Landscape on the Songhua River
Completed in 2015 on the wetlands north of the river, Ma Yansong's theatre of white aluminium and carved ash was shaped to look like snowdrifts. It was named building of the year in 2016.
The Harbin Opera House opened in 2015 in the capital of Heilongjiang, China’s most northerly province. It was designed by MAD Architects, the Beijing practice founded by Ma Yansong, and it is the building that made the firm known around the world. In 2016 it was voted building of the year by the readers of ArchDaily and won the performing spaces award of World Architecture News.
The site
Harbin grew up in the 1890s as a Russian railway town, and it is known for long winters in which the temperature falls to minus thirty. The opera house stands on the north bank of the Songhua River, opposite the old city, on an island among wetlands that was set aside for cultural buildings. Work began in April 2011.
Ma Yansong has said that he wanted the building to appear as part of the landscape, shaped by wind and water like the snow around it. The exterior is a continuous skin of white aluminium panels that rises from the ground in long curves and wraps around two halls. In winter it merges with the frozen marsh. In summer it stands white above the reeds.
Inside
The complex has a floor area of about 79,000 square metres. The main theatre seats 1,538 and the smaller one 414. A glass roof of faceted panels covers the lobby and brings daylight down the white walls.
The main hall is lined from floor to ceiling in Manchurian ash. The wood was carved and bent by hand into flowing forms that fold around the balconies and boxes, so that the room looks as if it had been hollowed from a single block. The warm timber is a deliberate contrast with the cold exterior. The back wall of the small theatre is a sound-proofed window, and the audience sees the wetland behind the stage.
A building to walk on
The architects treated the roof as public ground. A path cut into the outer shell climbs from the plaza to an open terrace at the top, from which visitors look back across the river to the city. It can be used without a ticket, and people come for it at sunset.
For travellers
Harbin is about five hours from Beijing by high-speed train and has flights from most Chinese cities. The opera house is half an hour by taxi from the centre. Tours of the interior are offered on some days, and a performance is the surest way to see the hall. The programme includes Chinese and Russian companies.
Most foreign visitors come in January and February for the ice and snow festival, when the opera house is at its most striking. The old city has the onion-domed cathedral of St Sophia and the cobbled Central Street. Among other buildings in China that reward a special journey are the UCCA Dune museum at Aranya and the Imperial Kiln Museum at Jingdezhen.