Performing Arts Centre, Abu Dhabi (EAU) / Zaha Hadid

Performing Arts Centre proposing to house five theatres – a music hall, concert hall, opera house, drama theatre and a flexible theatre with a combined seating capacity for 6,300. The Centre may also house an Academy of Performing Arts.

Analytical studies of organizational systems and growth in the natural world lead to the set of topologies that are the framework of the Performing Art Centre’s distinct formal language. These natural scenarios are formed by energy being supplied to enclosed systems, and the subsequent decrease in energy caused by development of organized structures.

The ‘energy’ of the Performing Art Centre is symbolized by the predominant movements in the urban fabric along the pedestrian corridor and the Cultural Centre’s seafront promenade – the site’s two intersecting primary elements.

Branching algorithms and growth-simulation processes have been used to develop spatial representations into a set of basic geometries, and then superimposed with programmatic diagrams and architectonic interpretations in a series of iteration cycles. The primary components of this biological analogy (branches, stems, fruits and leaves) are transformed from abstract diagrams into architectonic design.

The central axis of Abu Dhabi’s Cultural District is a pedestrian corridor that stretches from the Sheikh Zayed National Museum toward the sea.

This central axis interacts with the seafront promenade to generate a branching geometry where islands are formed, isolated, and translated into distinct bodies within the structure to house the main spaces of the centre.

This diagram of the interacting paths becomes the primary organization system for the building, making the movement of the public through the structure an integral feature of the design.

The sculptural form of the Performing Arts Center emerges from this linear movement, gradually developing into a growing organism that sprouts a network of successive branches. As it winds through the site, the architecture increases in complexity, building up height and depth and achieving multiple summits in the bodies housing the performance spaces, which spring from the structure like fruits on a vine and face westward, toward the water.

The building, which reaches a height of sixty-two meters, becomes part of an inclining ensemble of structures that stretch from the Maritime Museum at its southern end to the Abu Dhabi Contempory Art Museum at the northern tip.

With its center of mass at the water’s edge, the Performing Arts Center focuses its volume along the central axis of the site. This arrangement interrupts the block matrix, at the Arterial Road, opening views to the sea and the skyline of Abu Dhabi.

The concert hall is above the lower four theatres, allowing daylight into its interior and dramatic views of the sea and city skyline from the huge window behind the stage. Local lobbies for each theatre are orientated towards the sea to give each visitor a constant visual contact with their surroundings.

On the north side of the building, the restaurant offers a wide, shaded roof terrace, accessible through the adjacent conference centre above the lyrical theatre.

The Academy for Performing Arts is housed above the experimental theatre to the south, whilst in the eastern tail of the sculpture, retail areas take advantage of the pedestrian traffi c using he bridge connecting the Performing Arts Centre with the central pedestrian zone.