Mawei New Town, Fuzhou, China

 “Dividing the large complex into smaller units gives the Centre a more human scale and makes it easy for users to navigate both indoors and outdoors,” states Pekka Salminen of PES-Architects Ltd.

Chief Designer Pekka Salminen and his team at PES-Architects wanted the 150,000- square meter project area, which includes five main buildings, opera house, concert hall, multi-functional theatre, art exhibition hall, and cinema center with linking concourses and terraces, and gardens, to be integrated with the surrounding landscape and cultural elements. 

That includes the river and the Mahangzhou island nature reserve.

The project recently was awarded a 2021 International Architecture Award from The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies and The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design.

PES-Architects was commissioned to design Culture and Art Centre after winning an international competition in 2013. 

The five-petalled jasmine, the city’s official flower, provided the starting point for the design of the Fuzhou Strait Culture and Art Centre. 

This may not be apparent from ground level, but when seen from above, the floral inspiration becomes apparent.

The five buildings that comprise the center reference the five petals of a single jasmine flower. 

The buildings, clad in terracotta façade panels and baguette louvers, include a 700-seat multi-purpose theatre, a 1600-seat opera house, a 1000-seat concert hall, an art museum, and a film and television center. 

A Cultural Concourse and a terrace connect the main buildings.

One of the most notable aspects of the center is that it includes the biggest single-layer steel shell grid construction area and shell body grid span (165m long and 90m wide) in China. 

At 64.35m, the opera house is the center’s tallest building. 

Above ground, the grid covers an area of 33,821 square meters and it has a support column 41m high. Altogether, the steel components weigh an incredible 11.2 tons.

Arguably one of the most noticeable features of the Fuzhou Strait Culture and Art Centre is the use of white ceramic to clad the buildings and to provide shading. 

The results are a cohesive appearance that reflects the brilliant white of jasmine flowers, and an energy-efficient way of cooling the buildings.

The outer walls of the buildings are clad with terracotta façade panels manufactured by LOPO China. 

The same company also supplied the terracotta baguette sunshade louvers used to shade the buildings’ glass façades from direct sunlight. 

Ceramic is used as the project’s main material due to its significance in the historical context of the maritime silk road trade connection between China and the rest of the world.

The use of terracotta at the center is also an excellent demonstration of its durability as well as its design flexibility.

The architects paid special attention to the louvered façade and even went as far as developing a computer script to calculate the angle of, as well as the distance between, the louvers that offer the best shading.

Not every part of the buildings required shading, so the louvers in those areas were removed to enhance the views from inside. 

Not limited to the façades, ceramic is also the main material used inside the Fuzhou Strait Culture and Art Centre. 

The material is used to great effect inside the concourse, which also features marble and concrete reinforced by fiberglass. 

The columns that mushroom upwards house the lifts as well as ventilation equipment.

The use of ceramics inside the buildings is seen at its best in the opera house. 

The interior wall, which was designed as a continuum, was created in collaboration with Taiwanese ceramic artist Samuel Hsuan-yu Shih. 

The 3,200-square meter China White skin, which is decorated with 13 different shapes as well as 1.5 million ceramic jasmine petals, has both artistic and acoustic merit.

Project: Fuzhou Strait Culture and Art Centre (SCAC)
Architects: PES-Architects Ltd.
Lead Architects: Pekka Salminen, Martin Lukasczyk,, Samuel Hsuan-yu Shih, and Lai Linli
Photographers: Marc Goodwin / Archmospheres,, Zhang Yong, and Lopochina