David Chipperfield Architects have been invited to develop design proposals for an extension to Russia’s historic Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre, seven years after they won an international competition to refurbish and extend the building.

Following a meeting on 3 March with Maxim Reshetnikov, the acting governor of Perm City, the studio have been asked to visualise a new freestanding building for the opera house on the southern bank of the River Kama.

The existing building is one of the oldest and most important in Russia, with historic and artistic ties to ballet impresario Sergey Diaghilev and composer Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky – who was born in the region. Its official records go back as far as 1870, the date of its first première.

Today it houses prominent ballet and opera companies, a symphony orchestra and a renowned school of choreography.

In 2010, David Chipperfield Architects won a design competition to create a new theatre (pictured) with 1,200 seats and a stage a third bigger than the original. While that project stalled, the extension project has now been provisionally relaunched, albeit in the form of a separately standing building rather than a direct extension.

Few other design details are currently available.

It has been a busy few months for the practice. They have won the green light for their transformation of Eero Saarinen’s US embassy building in London into a hotel and leisure complex, seen their controversial Nobel Center design win council support in Stockholm, and passed construction milestones on major projects in Switzerland, India and China.