Architect: Zaha Hadid

Total area: 52,381 sqm
Theater and concert halls: 16,283 sqm
Institute for the Performing Arts: 3,557 sqm
Congress centre: 3,849 sqm
Other areas / back of house: 28,692 sqm

The 62 meter high building with its organic design will have five theatres, a concert hall, an opera house, a musical theatre, a playhouse theatre, and an experimental theatre with a combined seating capacity of 6,300. It will also house an Academy of Performing Arts.

About the concept of architect Zaha Hadid:
"The central axis of Abu Dhabi’s cultural district is a pedestrian corridor that stretches from the Sheikh Zayed National Museum toward the sea.(…) The sculptural form of the Performing Arts Centre 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." Quote from Zaha Hadid's design statement.

Print version
all the texts, including sources