Every so often, a project comes along that captures the relationship between architecture and nature. The unconventional Chapel of Sound, an open-air concert hall in a remote mountain valley two hours by car from Beijing, is one such project.
Designed by Beijing architecture studio OPEN, the Chapel of Sound is situated in an undeveloped valley in Chengde municipality, near a stretch of the Great Wall. OPEN founders Li Hu and Huang Wenjing, who are partners in life as well as architecture, say that since they were given carte blanche with the scope, scale and even the location of the structure, they very quickly realised how fragile the steep-sided, secluded, mountainous site was, its layered rock formations created by the glacier that once surged through the valley.
‘Instead of embedding it…
