This opera house is a hollow mountain stuffed with ellipsoidal volumes. These volumes are pressed between surfaces and rolled together like pastry to create the effect of a surface that varies from razor-thin to thick and bulbous. The 2,000 seat Opera and the 1,300 seat Multifunctional Theater are revealed as objects pressing into the mountain’s hollow interior, floating over vast and unprogrammed urban spaces.
The implied outer shell of the mountain becomes an open and inhabitable poché space housing support functions and circulation. Freeform surface graphics create opportunities for apertures and reveal the human scale referents of stairs and floors within this otherwise scale-indeterminate building.
Client: Municipal Government of Busan
Type: Opera and Multi-functional Theater
Size: 58,000 SM
