Ordos Music Hall

Company: Cannon Design
Industry: Architecture, Engineering & Construction

The present embodies the past when traditional culture is infused in the design of a thoroughly modern concert hall. Cannon Design used building information modeling (BIM) to design and analyze the Ordos Music Hall complex located in the new city of Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China. The complex features a 1,200-seat concert hall, a 400-seat multipurpose theater, and a special 100-seat theater space designed to accommodate traditional Mongolian music performances.

Conceptual Design
The design team, led by the firm's Yazdani Studio, was inspired by the traditional “dance of the long sleeves,” in which dancers wearing floor-length sleeves perform elegant, sweeping movements. —They used circular shapes and patterns to create a network of interwoven performance spaces.

Design Development
BIM and design visualization helped the Cannon Design team envision and test environmental effects that are both practical and beautiful. Artfully combining six different algorithmic patterns of punched holes in metal panels, the team created the effect of a flowing, perforated skin that appears to be continuously changing, achieving in the process a calculated balance of transparency and solar control.

Visualization
Parametric models helped the designers incorporate a series of circular patterns on the protective skin, reinforcing cultural references unique to the dance movements that inspired the basic building concept.