Snøhetta Wins Busan Opera House Competition With Theater that Joins Sea and Sky in South Korea

<a href="http://www.snoarc.no" target="_blank">Snøhetta</a> recently won an international competition to design a new opera house for the city of Busan, South Korea. The site of the opera house literally sits on the intersection of heaven, earth, and water (Kun, Kon, and Kam respectively). These <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba_gua">trigrams </a>are classically important to Korean culture, and therefore the form of the building reflects the bending and meeting of these three components.

The streetscape of the building is just as impressive as the waterscape. The most important aspect of urban design in this context is how to pull the public into the building or site. This design does just that.

The site of the opera house literally sits on the intersection of heaven, earth, and water (Kun, Kon, and Kam respectively). These trigrams are classically important to Korean culture, and therefore the form of the building reflects the bending and meeting of these three components. Just as the trigram dictates, the building lifts to meet the sea and sky, while being solidly fixed to the ground.

The typology that they have presented lends itself to expand the inviting and open participation of the building at an entrance level. This helps to present an urban context that is friendly to the general public and encourages social activity.

The compact nature of the building provides the client with an economic and sustainable solution for the site. The sustainable elements of the project provide for the building to have a sustainable long-term maintenance plan for the building.

The auditorium of the opera was designed to be acoustically correct and aesthetically impressive.

The geometry twists and bends in a way to open the flowing public entrances around the building, while still accommodating the programmatic elements in the building.