Jeddah Opera House

Jeddah (SA)

Client

Jeddah Central Development Company

Team

Henning Larsen Architects : architect, lighting design
Nagata Acoustics : acoustician
Buro Happold Engineering : technical design office

Performing Arts

Program

Building surface : 28 500 m²
Seating capacity Lyric theatre : 1 572 seats
Mid scale Theater : 705 seats / rehearsal hall : 183 seats
Frame opening Lyric : 18 m / stage depth Lyric : 15.6 m
Frame opening Midscale : 12 m
Stage depth Midscale : 11.8 m
Construction budget : confidential / scenographic budget : 34.8 M€ (estimation)
Construction of a building integrating 3 performance halls: 1500-seat Lyric Theater, 700-seat Mid-scale Theater, 180-seat Rehearsal Hall. Convertible halls allowing seats to be retracted for flat events. Logistics and support areas, dressing rooms and artists’ quarters.

équipe ducks

Clément, Aldo, Alexandre G., Anelyse, Antoine, Cyril, Fanny, Grégory, Isabelle, Juliette, Kevin L., Kevin M., Lorenzo, Lucie, Reda, Simon, Stéphane

Missions

Scenographic design (spaces and operation)
Design and technical development of stage machinery systems / seats, grandstands and platforms / sound system / video / stage lighting systems / variable acoustics /study of visibility / project coordination and management / BIM modeling

Scenography

As part of the “Jeddah Central Project”, the future Jeddah Opera House is one of the highlights of the vast urban redevelopment plan for the waterfront, which aims to develop tourism in the kingdom’s 2nd largest city and gateway to Mecca. The building incorporates 3 performance halls dedicated to theater, opera, music and dance: a 1500-seat grand theater, a 700-seat medium theater and a rehearsal hall with a capacity of 180 spectators. The theaters are equipped with automatically transformable seating arrays, enabling the creation of vast, single-storey stage areas for a variety of events (weddings, dinners, ceremonies, etc.) in just a few hours. dUCKS managed the design of the 3 halls, stages and backstage areas (operation, 3d visibility studies, logistics management…) and was responsible for the design of all scenic systems, including the machinery for transforming the halls, the computerized machinery for the stage cages, and the scenic networks for controlling lighting, sound and video using the latest digital protocols.

Missions