Magnitogorsk is one of Russia’s largest industrial centers and the most important city of the Southern Urals. Located 1,700 kilometers from Moscow, it lies literally on the boundary between two continents: its eastern part is in Asia, its western part in Europe.

It was founded and developed as a center of Soviet metallurgy; in 1932 the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works (MMK), the largest in the country at the time, was built here. Today the city has a population of over 400,000. The entire structure of Magnitogorsk, including the layout of its center, reflects the Soviet era and the urban-planning concepts of the 1930s-1950s.





In 2029, the city will celebrate its 100th anniversary. One of the events timed to coincide with this date will be the construction of a new stage of the musical theater, designed by Fourth Dimension.

The location

A 3.3-hectare plot in the very heart of the city, at 71A Lenin Avenue, has been allocated for construction. The theater will rise in a recreational zone in immediate proximity to the embankment of the Ural River, the Alley of Glory, and the “Rear to the Front” memorial (1979) by sculptor Lev Golovnitsky and architect Yakov Belopolsky, the city’s most recognizable landmark.



The site has key urban-planning significance and excellent visual qualities. Near the future theater is the city stadium, and almost directly opposite, on the other side of the avenue, stands the building of the city administration. The appearance of the New Stage in this precise location will inevitably make it a focal point of the city panorama, completing the urban ensemble and enriching the surrounding area with new layers of meaning.

The task

The New Stage is being created for the Magnitogorsk Opera and Ballet Theater, which currently works in a small 1950s convention center that was never intended for theatrical productions. Today the theater is in great demand among audiences: with a symphony orchestra and full opera and ballet companies, it maintains an extensive repertoire across various genres.



The architects were tasked with creating a high-tech theater that is contemporary yet incorporates classical and traditional motifs, and that would fit organically into the established Stalin-era Soviet fabric of the city center.

The final image of the theater and its internal structure took shape throughout the entire design process, with the active participation of the technical directors of several major Moscow theaters – the Bolshoi, the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, and the Theater of Nations. Equally important were the contributions of the city’s mayor, Sergey Berdnikov, and the director of the Magnitogorsk Opera and Ballet Theater, Ilya Kozhevnikov, who were virtually involved in the project on a daily and highly detailed basis.

Vsevolod Medvedev, the leader of Fourth Dimension

Any theater is a one-of-a-kind project – you could even call it a collector’s piece. There are no ready-made methods, no prepackaged ideas or standard solutions. You always start from a blank slate, and that’s where the main creative value and professional challenge lie for architects and artists. This theater was especially interesting and demanding for us, because its opening for the city’s 100th anniversary will be a major event that residents and performers are eagerly anticipating. We had to create a new urban symbol – a multifunctional, flexible complex where opera, ballet, drama productions, symphony concerts, major civic events can all take place with equal comfort, and, importantly, where any touring company can be hosted. Hence a broader name that it bears: the New Stage of the Music Theater.

Oleg Medinsky, the co-founder of Fourth Dimension

At the very beginning, we were quite apprehensive about our concept – fitting an extensive and complex theater program into a pure geometric form. However, it turned out to be a very engaging challenge – a kind of next step in mastering the ideal form, since previously we had worked on the “Tchaikovsky Univers”’ inscribed in a circle and the Khvorostovsky Theater inscribed in a cube.