PALACE DE ELYSEE Wedding Hall, Shanghai Concert Hall | NONG STUDIO

Shanghai has never fallen short of history and stories. It’s even so true for Shanghai Concert Hall. There are stories of voluptuous life and celebrations for the founding of new China. We have no intention of playing up to history. Rather, we just try to find a way of making history interesting, such as opera. No need to be like the extreme luxury and desire in La Vegas neither should it be like the vehement and passion of the Broadway. We just extract the time and space features of the opera, thus making the experience intriguing.

Regards to the space arrangement in both No. 1 and No. 2 halls, the form of lobby, narrow corridor and then the spacious lobby is adopted to demonstrate the solemn ritual sense with cadence. No. 2 Hall is unfolded in an axial symmetric way. The staggering four boxes and the stage at the end of the central red carpet virtually present an opera house of the 1930s. The upstairs and downstairs arrangement makes it vague as to who’s the actual protagonist and who’s the audience. The entire lobby is decorated by wine red velvet and black-white Pope art. The strong black-white line together with the heavy curtain, the soft light shedding from the cloud stone on the ceiling constitute a grand picture. However, at the end of the red carpet, the ceiling is a mirror which inverts the stage, plus the joking zebras and antlers on the walls around. It’s like Napoleon III meeting One Thousand and One Nights. What we need is exactly such casual ridicule and spice.

No. 1 Hall is more modern. Some seats are placed on the second floor, off the axial direction. Therefore, the original symmetric space is broken and the sunshine lights up the main hall by penetrating through the staggering floor. The wall of the main hall is decorated by white French-style engraving with exaggerated proportion. The retro recessed head lamp and the glimmering crystal light build an elegant and decent feast space. However, just like Cinderella is more willing to run taking her crystal shoes, we like showing interesting retro sense more. Hence, we arrange the marble on the floor in a zig-zag way and put metal grating on the ceiling. The outdoor sunshine is sprayed onto the interior space through the staggering balcony and the stage background is the arc long windows. It’s like the long corridor under wisteria in Versailles at the end of which is the Swan Lake.

Design has no boundary nor so-called fixed matching. If there is, it’s the shackles of our own imaginations only. Instead of being gentlemen and ladies, we prefer being naughty to demonstrate elegance with mixed styles.