Rays of Light

On the coast of the Yellow Sea, a new cultural venue by two of China's most exciting creative minds looks to the sun

- FRED A. BERNSTEIN

Yantai, an industrial city on the Yellow Sea in Eastern China, wanted to give a vast new beachfront development an icon. And who better to design it than OPEN Architecture, the Beijing-based firm that has already created some of the most original buildings in China? Those include UCCA Dune, a contemporary art museum that looks like seashells strewn across a sandy beach, and the Chapel of Sound, an open-air concert hall that resembles a hollow boulder. Invited to submit a proposal for Yantai, OPEN's husband-and-wife founders, Li Hu and Huang Wenjing—regular honorees on the AD100 list of Architectural Digest China—were determined to create a building that, Li says, rewards repeat visits, inviting you “to explore, to contemplate, to understand.” The couple also envisioned a cultural destination for a part of the city that so far has very few.