The interior of the Harbin Opera House [Photo/my399.com]

The opera house in the city of Harbin, Heilongjiang province, which was designed by MAD Architects, has been reported to have won an Architizer A+ Award, dubbed the Oscars of architecture, on April 12.
It sits alongside Harbin’s wetlands and was designed to symbolizes the force and spirit of the city’s untamed wilderness and frigid climate and as an artistic blend of nature and topography and culture.
It took six years to complete the complicated design work for the structure, which contains a theater with 1,600 seats and a smaller one to accommodate an audience of 400.
The architect and founder of MAD Architects, Ma Yansong, explained, “We see the Opera House as a cultural center for the future, a tremendous performance venue, and dramatic public space that integrates humans, art and the city, synergistically blending with the surroundings.”
The building was named best Cultural Architecture for 2015 by ArchDaily, a popular architecture website viewed worldwide and was the only Chinese entry to win the A+Award, the largest awards program started by the world’s largest architectural medium, Architizer, and papers such as the Wall Street Journal and USA Today.