everyone what it’s supposed to be.” At
the same time they wanted to ensure the
use of local references were not too blatant
or pastiche.
The Sea of Bamboo across the lake
seemed the ideal place to draw inspiration
from, given its familiarity to the residents of
the city. “As kids they’ll have wandered
through this forest, it will be a sort of
primal memory for them,” Chilton says.
The architects discovered it had been used
in a scene from Crouching Tiger Hidden
Dragonwhich, admits Chilton, “was quite
exciting.” They also came across a number
of architectural works which had used light
columns, and so their final concept – using
slim white steel columns to mimic the
bamboo – “quickly crystallised around that
idea,” he says. While he admits it was an
obvious local reference point, the architect
says “they tried to deliver that in a way
where actually it’s still interesting as a
stand-alone piece of architecture.”
Despite the theatre being home to a
permanent show, it isn’t something they
drew inspiration from, for a couple of
reasons. Chilton says what Dragone produce
will similarly be inspired by the locality andtherefore “harmonise with anything we do.
They approach it in a similar way.” The
company also typically include a lot of
digital elements, and the show will
constantly evolve. “It will continue to
develop, so you don’t want to take anything
from it because it may not be there!”
Although Wanda didn’t get too involved
in the design itself, they did collaborate
with the practice on certain elements.
“They set the parameters, it needed to fit
within a certain volume,” Chilton says.
They had to resolve what he describes as
“two opposing forces”, in terms of both the
car park and the building needing to be a
certain size. “You had the building wanting
to push out and the car park pushing in,”
he explains.
This meant the final building ended up
slightly smaller than originally planned,
“but that’s just part of the design
development process,” Chilton says. They
had the client’s full support with the most
“‘designed’ elements” – the building itself,
the canopy, and the columns. “They had
faith in us. They liked our vision for
what it is, what it’s trying to be, so it was a
good collaboration.”The Sea of Bamboo across
the lake seemed the ideal
place to draw inspiration
from, given its familiarity
to the residents of the city
34PROJECT REPORT: CULTURAL, CIVIC & FAITH BUILDINGSWWW.ARCHITECTSDATAFILE.CO.UK ADF AUGUST 2019