ArchShowcase Sumit Singhal
Sumit Singhal loves modern architecture. He comes from a family of builders who have built more than 20 projects in the last ten years near Delhi in India. He has recently started writing about the architectural projects that catch his imagination. Abu Dhabi Performing Arts Centre in UAE by Zaha Hadid ArchitectsNovember 10th, 2011 by Sumit Singhal
Article source: Zaha Hadid Architects A new performing arts centre housing five theatres, music hall, concert hall and opera house – conceived as a sculptural form, emerging naturally from the intersection of pedestrian pathways within a new cultural district – a growing organism that spreads through successive branches which form the structure like ‘fruits on the vine’.
The new Performing Arts Centre (PAC), one of five major cultural institutions located on on Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi, houses five theatres – a music hall, concert hall, opera house, drama theatre and a flexible theatre with a combined seating capacity for 6,300. Zaha Hadid has described the design of the Performing Arts Centre as: ‘A sculptural form that emerges from a linear intersection of pedestrian paths within the cultural district, gradually developing into a growing organism that sprouts a network of successive branches. As it winds through the site, the architecture increases in complexity, building up height and depth and achieving multiple summits in the bodies housing the performance spaces, which spring from the structure like fruits on a vine and face westward, toward the water.’ The building’s distinct formal language is derived from a set of typologies evident in organizational systems and growth in the natural world – natural scenarios formed the release and subsequent decline of energy supplied to enclosed systems. The PAC’s ‘energy’ is symbolized by the predominant movements in the urban fabric along the central axis of the pedestrian corridor and the cultural centre’s seafront promenade – the site’s two intersecting primary elements. Growth-simulation processes have been used to develop spatial representations into a set of basic geometries and then superimposed with programmatic diagrams into a series of repeated cycles. The primary components of this biological analogy (branches, stems, fruits and leaves) are then transformed from these abstract diagrams into architectonic design. Contact Zaha Hadid Architects
Categories: Performing Arts Center, Zaha Hadid |