In Yixing, a city in China’s Jiangsu province, the firm GOA (Group of Architects) has unveiled a daring new venue: a 9,200-square-meter open-air theater conceived not just for humans, but for birds. Dubbed Earth Valley Theater, the project redefines what a performance space can be, uniting landscape, architecture, and living animals into one immersive environmental drama.
Project Info
Project Name: The Earth Valley Theater
Location: Yixing, Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, China
Architects/Designers: GOA (Group of Architects)
Client: Jiangsu Mingling Yaohu Town Tourism Co., Ltd.
Director (Dancing with the Birds): Yueshang Studio
Acoustic Consultant: EZPro
Environmental Visual Consultant: ToThree
Aviary Management: Puy du Fou
A Landscape Sculpted by Nature and Art
Rather than imposing a building on the land, GOA allowed the existing valleys at the edge of Yaohu Town to shape the theater. The slopes, ridges, and natural contours determined the venue’s form long before a single structure was erected.
The architects crafted “clay” volumes out of CNC-processed concrete - later hand-sculpted on site - to reference Yixing’s pottery heritage. Simultaneously, the “bamboo” motif, inspired by dense local bamboo forests, reappears in the stage installation and aviary facades. Instead of fragile natural bamboo, the design uses weather-resistant high-density polyethylene, woven in varied tones to simulate traditional bamboo textures.
As a result, the theater feels less like a constructed structure and more like an organic extension of the valley - a space that dissolves into nature rather than competing with it.
The Earth Valley Theater emerges from Yixing’s natural contours, blending sculpted “clay” forms with the surrounding valley landscape
The audience area, carved from the sloping valley floor, offers an immersive vantage point where natural scenery becomes part of the performance
Color-layered lattice panels mimic the rhythm of bamboo forests, creating an organic gateway into the Earth Valley Theater
Theatre - Reimagined for Birds and Humans Alike
The Earth Valley Theater was built for Dancing with the Birds, a Sino - French ecological narrative show directed by Fan Yue. Because birds are the lead performers and humans the audience, the design had to accommodate their very different behaviors, especially flight paths and spatial comfort.
Audiences sit on a gently sloping terrain carved into the valley, while aviaries occupy a more secluded adjacent valley. At key moments, flocks of birds such as white storks emerge from the aviaries: some birds glide just above spectators’ heads, weaving between natural topography and architectural geometry.
To safeguard avian welfare and audience tranquility, the design integrates micro-level details: ground gravel, mesh sizes, and enclosure partitions tailored for species-specific needs; glass surfaces marked with dot stickers to prevent bird collisions; thermally treated timber (as opposed to painted surfaces) to avoid toxic exposure; and carefully calibrated slopes to ensure safe flight and comfortable viewing.
The open-air setting becomes a living theatre, where birds follow instinctive flight paths and humans witness a performance shaped by nature’s rhythms
The central stage emerges like a landform - an abstract clay ridge shaped by CNC concrete and hand finishing - anchoring the performance in the terrain
A valley reshaped into a shared habitat, where the show belongs to the birds
Performing Nature - Architecture as an Ecosystem
In Earth Valley Theater, architecture isn’t just a stage for performance: it is part of the performance. The sculpted terrain hides drainage channels that align with the valley’s natural flood paths, ensuring the theater coexists sustainably with seasonal weather patterns. Hidden cavities inside the “clay” landforms house acoustic systems to support the multimedia aspects of the show. Meanwhile, aviaries were assembled from prefabricated light-steel components - a pragmatic choice enabling precision, efficiency, and flexibility.
This melding of environment, animal biology, audience experience, and technical infrastructure exemplifies a holistic design approach, where construction, ecology, and theatrical storytelling converge.
A place where engineering fades into nature, and nature becomes the performance
Why Earth Valley Theater Matters
With the Earth Valley Theater, GOA challenges long-standing assumptions about what performing arts architecture should be. Instead of isolating humanity from nature, the theater invites humans and animals to share a stage, turning a performance into a living dialogue between species, landscape, and story.
It demonstrates how architecture can foster empathy toward non-human life, respect for environment and biodiversity, and a sense of wonder rooted not in spectacle but in coexistence. As lead architect Xu Qi aptly puts it: “Space is no longer a shelter, but a question: how far are we from nature, and how close are we to ourselves?”
In an age when environmental awareness is no longer optional, the Earth Valley Theater offers a model - a reminder that the distinction between architecture and ecology, between performance and nature, can blur in beautiful and unexpected ways.
In the Earth Valley Theater, biodiversity, landscape, and story converge into a single, shared performance
PHOTO CREDIT: Chen Xi Studio
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