“Building a Fuzhou Strait Culture and Art Centre contract goes to PES-Architects.” They won the project in 2013 after entering into an international competition. 

This art center was going to be built in a Fuzhou city of China – the fastest-growing metropolitan city of the world. It is the center of attraction for many tourists. The whole project is spread across 150,000 square meters of area.

Let’s have an overview of the project,

Name: Fuzhou Strait Culture and Art Centre

Architects: PES-Architects

Year: 2014 – 2018

Location: Mawei New Town, Fuzhou, China

Type of Buildings: Opera house, Art Exhibition hall, Cinema Center, Concert hall, Multi-functional Theatre

PES-architects are known for their wonderful and eye-catchy structural design, and this project was no less. Here again, they have shown their inexplicable creative side.

The whole art center design is the result of inspiration from the jasmine flower, the floral symbol of the city. What else can give it a home-touch feeling!

The project included five buildings, terraces, linking concourses, and gardens to be integrated with the surrounding cultural elements like the Minjiang River and Mahangzhou island nature reserve.

The chief architect, Pekka Salminen came up with the idea of having five buildings in a complex, to make it easy for users to navigate the indoors and outdoors.

Jasmine Petals as Buildings’ Shape

With jasmine as an inspiration, the architects developed the petal design for five buildings. You won’t be able to notice that from the ground level, but when observed from the upper level, the influence is clearly seen.

LOPO terracotta panels were used as a cladding for building an opera house (1600 seats), multi-purpose theatre (700 seats), concert hall (1000-seats), an art museum, and a movie center. 

Want to know why PES-architects, choose terracotta panels? Terracotta has been in this industry for a long time. You can consider them as the best material to use for cladding, along with a beautified look, it also provides robust and long-lasting safety measures to the building. 

The most notable aspect of the Fuzhou Strait Culture and Art Centre is the construction of the biggest steel grid shell area and shell body grid span in China. Overall, the steel used in the constructions weighs around 11.2 tons.

Ceramic as Chief Material

Another noticeable feature is the usage of white ceramic for cladding and providing shade to the building. The cohesive result is the buildings’ beautiful outlook of jasmine petals and the energy-efficient way of cooling the building.

The company, which provided the terracotta panels, also provided terracotta baguettes louvers to shade the buildings’ glass facade from the direct sunlight. 

Ceramic was the project’s main material due to its historical significance and its design flexibility. The use of terracotta increased the durability of the building. 

Architects were determined to use the louvers so attentively that they planned the computer script for its placement. This way, they were able to place the louvers where needed, with the precise angle as to provide the maximum shading and remove from the unnecessary spaces.

Last but not least, its Interiors

Not only facades but the interiors are also adorned with ceramics in Fuzhou Strait Culture and Art Centre. It is also used in creating a great effect in the concourse adjacent to the marble and concrete reinforced by fiberglass. It doesn’t only uplift the entire interior, it also works as ventilation equipment.

The major use of ceramics is in the center of an opera house. The wall of the opera house is designed as a continuum, which is decorated with 13 different shapes and 1.5 million ceramic jasmine-petal-shaped tiles.

The concert hall is magnificent as well as the most functional part of the art center. The walls of the hall are on a large scale and composed of fractions of sphere surfaces, which makes it the functional seating area.

The multi-purpose hall can occupy 700 people, and the walls are cladded with solid CNC cut bamboo blocks, arranged in a needed way. The roof is equipped with flexible cables and lightings, which can be switched as per requirement.