A purpose-built performance venue on the edge of Shuiguo Lake in Wuhan. The building takes its origin from the traditional Chinese paper lantern and translates that reference into structure, surface, light and urban presence.
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Reference
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The lantern is both cultural reference and structural principle.
The Chinese paper lantern combines civic, domestic and festival associations with a precise structural idea: a lightweight surface held in form by a minimal frame. That dual condition made it the origin for the project. A second reference works at the scale of the surface. Each of the 18,000 aluminium disks is modelled on the Bi disk, an ancient artefact from the Han Dynasty, linking material detail to place rather than to general cultural shorthand.
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System
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The lantern frame is rebuilt at theatre scale.
Eight intersecting tubular steel rings wrap the fly tower. Between them, tensioned cable nets form a field of trapezoidal surfaces. Each node supports a concave red aluminium disk with integrated LED lighting. The facade is therefore structure, cladding and display surface at the same time. At podium level, the tassels of a lantern are translated into slender columns and vertical gold fritting, shading the lobby and framing the lake-facing entrance.
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Resolution
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By day, a tensile structure. At night, a lantern.
The building completes after dark. The disks illuminate as one field, organised by the same ring geometry visible in daylight. The upper structure acts as urban marker, sound baffle and passive shading device. The podium opens the lobby to the lake. Structure, light, surface and reference remain one system.
Project concept by Steven Chilton Architects. Project developed by Steven Chilton while serving as Director of Architecture at Mark Fisher Studio Ltd.
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