Smoldering Civic Architecture

If you think about the elements that construct a piece of architecture, it is quite likely that your list will include materials in solid states. Liu Chien-Sheng's Pushkinsky Cinema Hall suggests that gasses would enhance the appearance and experience of buildings, demonstrating the effect through this Changing the Face competition entry.

Planned for Pushkin Square in Moscow, Russia, this Chinese proposal strives to communicate structural poetry. The great theater would rest on the urban green line, adjacent to a statue of Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin with the added purpose of referencing the monument, the man and his memory.

The concepts of freedom, warmth and inspiration are expressed in Liu Chien-Sheng's Pushkinsky Cinema Hall through an abstract design that resembles a fire's burning embers. Steam rises up the sides of the building to turn the thermochromic metal cladding red, keep the interior toasty and create the appearance of an impossibly protean edifice.