Guangxi Culture & Arts Center

As elsewhere in China, the Nanning Culture & Arts Center is a grand theater that serves as a venue for a wide range of musical and cultural programs. Its three concert halls are separate entities placed on a shared plinth. The opera house to the south-west with its 1,600 seats and a 600-square-meter stage opens out to a newly created lake. Wood-paneled surfaces create a warm interior atmosphere, and also have a positive effect on the acoustics: the reverberation time of 1.5 to 1.8 seconds provides ideal acoustic conditions. The concert hall to the east has 1,200 seats and has been designed as an oblong hexagon. It features an organ with 64 registers and is suitable for staging a wide range of repertoires. The smallest hall, with 550 seats, is a multi-functional hall and is located to the north. Its electronically controlled acoustics ensure that the reverberation time can be adjusted with infinite variability. A shared roof connects the three structures. Similar to the facades, it appears as a large structure of louvers, which has been constructed with a steel frame substructure and white folded aluminum panels as cladding. In this way, the brilliant white of the theater venue makes it stand out from the surroundings, emphasizing the confident statement as a cultural center.