The Concert Hall Reshaping What a Roof Can Do

The roof is the acoustic shell, the rainwater strategy and the only thing holding the building up.

The site had been empty for nine years, long enough for the neighbourhood to form a settled opinion about what should happen to it, and long enough for two previous schemes to be abandoned at planning.

Marta Dvořák, the project architect, has been close to it from the start.

The decision

A single folded plate spans 46 metres without an internal column, and its underside is the ceiling the audience hears.

It took three attempts. The first was abandoned at the end of the first month, the second survived until costing, and the third is the one standing.

The acoustic consultant asked for eleven changes to the fold geometry; nine were accepted.

One element doing three jobs is cheaper than three elements doing one each. It is also much harder to draw.

Dvořák

In practice

Rain is not piped. It runs down the folds into a channel at the perimeter, which is also the handrail on the upper terrace.

The detail that will matter in ten years is the one nobody photographed: the junction where the new work meets the old, and who is expected to maintain it.

It has been well received by the audience it was made for and largely ignored by everyone else, which the team says is the outcome they wanted.

There is no shortage of people willing to call it inevitable in hindsight. Nobody involved describes it that way.

What comes next

The first season opens in September with a programme chosen to test the room.