Attend A Show At This Shanghai Entertainment Center Clad In Oak

2024 Best of Year Winner for Entertainment

Set amid skyscrapers in an emerging riverside business district, the New Bund 31 Performing Arts Center, a 189,000-square-foot cultural facility, offers a contemporary take on a classical archetype: the arena. Arched forms proliferate throughout the interior crafted by Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, creating a particularly dramatic effect when stacked to the full height of the five-story atrium lobby. That’s a prelude to the 2,500-seat grand theater in Shanghai, a soaring volume of curving shapes and horseshoe balconies entirely clad in oak, which introduces a warm tonality, both visually and acoustically. Additional striking material choices include paneling the multipurpose performance and exhibition space with blackened stainless steel, turning it into a literal “black box,” and the glass-block construction in the adjacent escalator area, which yields a contrasting “light box” that arriving patrons experience as a crystalline tunnel.

PROJECT TEAM: LYNDON NERI; ROSSANA HU; ZIYI CAO; FONG WIN HUANG; ALEXANDER GOH; ATH SUPORNCHAI; BECKY ZHANG; CHERI LEE; CHAOFU YEH; CHRISTINE CHANG; DANYAN JIN; DAVIS BUTNER; ELIS HUANG; ELAN TAO; GUANLIN LEE; GREG WU; JINGYI BI; JINLONG LI; KANY LIU; KATE HWANG; KATHY HU; LUNA HONG; NICOLAS FARDET; SELA LIM; SHIQI ZHANG; SIYU CHEN, VANESSA WU; ZHIKANG WANG.