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Yueqi Jazzy Li photographs Tadao Ando’s Shanghai Poly Grand Theatre

China Architecture News - Jan 16, 2017 - 19:28   29157 views

Yueqi Jazzy Li photographs Tadao Ando’s Shanghai Poly Grand Theatre

Architecture photographer Yueqi Jazzy Li has documented Tadao Ando's latest work Shanghai's Poly Grand Theatre in Jiading district with a series of summer day images, capturing sleeping people, playing kids and natural visitors walking around the theatre.

Designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando, the building is composed of a theatre and a tower, the complex creates a sense of serenity while also achieving a level of theatrical playfulness. Using his signature in-situ concrete, Ando creates a theatre building that offers a number of surprising spatial moments as the rectangular volume is intersected by cylindrical tunnels.

Yueqi Jazzy Li photographs Tadao Ando’s Shanghai Poly Grand Theatre

New York-based architect and photographer Yueqi Jazzy Li spent a summer day by walking around the building and captured special moments of this 'playful' building. Revealing spontaneous and detailed perspectives from inside and outside, Yueqi Jazzy Li documents particular details, corners, surfaces and excentric living spaces of the theatre, two year after its opening to the public.

The building is conceived as the city’s first 'waterscape theatre', located by Yuanxiang Lake, in Jiading New Town. It comprises a main hall, a multi-function hall and plazas, as well as two 'semi-outdoor' theatres named 'water stage' and 'roof theatre'. 

Yueqi Jazzy Li photographs Tadao Ando’s Shanghai Poly Grand Theatre

Geometric shapes, reflecting the signature style of Tadao Ando, can be seen throughout the architecture. For example, interlaced cylindrical elements make up the entrance lobby, lounge and outdoor theatres. The design of the theatre reflects that Tadao Ando placed a great deal of attention on its relationship with water, wind and light – notably its integration with the natural landscape.

Yueqi Jazzy Li photographs Tadao Ando’s Shanghai Poly Grand Theatre

Tadao Ando's theatre is derived from a 330′ x 330′ x 113′ reinforced concrete box shaping the majority of the primary structure surrounded by a transparent curtain wall -and it forms a double-skin facade system. 

The interior features the 1,600-seat main theater, the cylindrical theme continues. Bands of laminated wood rib-wall are covering at the orchestra level and up through two balcony levels provide a warm, textured contrast to the more subdued aluminum and exposed-concrete finishes in the bulk of the interiors.

Yueqi Jazzy Li photographs Tadao Ando’s Shanghai Poly Grand Theatre

''Photographing this building proved to be a rather inspiring experience. familiar here is the concrete walls that jut out at an angle, unfamiliar here is also the concrete that sits quietly behind a veil of glass curtain wall. the visual effect of this unusual and somewhat gratuitous double wall helps the building take on different appearances depending on the time of the day and the angle from which one views. inside, the grand halls are colossal in scale but the wood clad walls that articulate the bored tunnels help counter the grandness with whimsical spatial character,'' explains Yueqi Jazzy Li. 

Yueqi Jazzy Li photographs Tadao Ando’s Shanghai Poly Grand Theatre

''Although the buildings plenty indoor outdoor spaces was largely unused due to the stifling summer heat, those who are adventurous do find it very enjoyable to experience the unpredictably spaces and to be shaded by the massive concrete box. Compared to the massive office tower also by ando next door, which is very much about a masculine statement, the theatre building seems to have a well balanced blend of masculinity and femininity that together give the building a wonderful theatrical spirit atypical of ando’s many other zen evoking works,'' he added.

Yueqi Jazzy Li photographs Tadao Ando’s Shanghai Poly Grand Theatre

Yueqi Jazzy Li photographs Tadao Ando’s Shanghai Poly Grand Theatre

Yueqi Jazzy Li photographs Tadao Ando’s Shanghai Poly Grand Theatre

Yueqi Jazzy Li photographs Tadao Ando’s Shanghai Poly Grand Theatre

Yueqi Jazzy Li photographs Tadao Ando’s Shanghai Poly Grand Theatre

Yueqi Jazzy Li photographs Tadao Ando’s Shanghai Poly Grand Theatre

Yueqi Jazzy Li photographs Tadao Ando’s Shanghai Poly Grand Theatre

Yueqi Jazzy Li photographs Tadao Ando’s Shanghai Poly Grand Theatre

Yueqi Jazzy Li photographs Tadao Ando’s Shanghai Poly Grand Theatre

All images © Yueqi Jazzy Li

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