Back in 2010, Ma Yansong's team won an open international competition for the design of the so-called "Island of Culture" in a wetland on the Songhua River in the "Russian" city of the PRC (it was founded in 1898 in the northeast of modern China by the Russian government as a station on the Transmanchurian Railway) … A large project envisaged the construction of an opera house and a cultural center on a site of about 180 hectares, as well as the organization of the traditional swamp landscape around. As always, Ma Yansong has created a tangle of fantastic fluid forms, strong cultural traditions, natural landscape elements and eternal human ambitions. The closest in the direction of search can be called his projects of the Museum of Art on Pingtan Island and the Museum of Narrative Art of George Lucas in Chicago.
The already completed opera house covers an area of about 79,000 m22 and consists of two halls: the large one can accommodate 1600 spectators, and the small one is designed for 400 people. The halls are separated into independent volumes and are connected at a spacious square. Smooth, but clear bends of the shell, reminiscent of either a bizarre mountain with a noticeable serpentine, or a giant octopus (this resemblance is especially noticeable on the plan), are lined with smooth white aluminum plates. Contrasted with them is an insert of "thorny" glass prisms, which forms the space of the main foyer, the winter garden and a large observation deck at the very top of the 56-meter building. As a result, one of the many allusions comes to the fore: in cold and windy winters, rounded, white volumes merge with the local landscape, pretending to be snowdrifts around blocks of ice.
At the same time, nature itself becomes a part of the theatrical scenery, and in the literal sense: the back wall of the small hall is made of transparent soundproof glass. The space of the large hall is formed by a complex, bionic structure trimmed with Manchu ash. The warm tone and rich texture of natural wood contrasts sharply with the white and cold surrounding world, breathing life into it. It is symbolic that, although weak, natural light penetrates into the hall through a special lantern. The hall itself is also sheathed with wood, which, combined with the flowing, curvilinear forms, made it possible to achieve good acoustics. And again, in the location of the slots that determine the zoning of places for spectators, an incomprehensible, alien creature suddenly appears. So cosmic allusions turn out to be quite legitimate.
