Huacheng Square

This guide to Huacheng Square in Guangzhou opens at the Guangzhou Opera House, architect Zaha Hadid's design of two river-smoothed pebbles that won an international competition against far more conventional entries, and the engineering headaches of bending an eighteen-hundred-seat theatre into curves that erosion usually takes centuries to carve. It follows the square's daytime life as a park of flower islands and a mirror-still lake, then turns to what happens after dusk, when the square becomes something else entirely.