This website requires certain cookies to work and uses other cookies to help you have the best experience. By visiting this website, certain cookies have already been set, which you may delete and block. By closing this message or continuing to use our site, you agree to the use of cookies. Visit our updated privacy and cookie policy to learn more.
This Website Uses Cookies
By closing this message or continuing to use our site, you agree to our cookie policy. Learn More
This website requires certain cookies to work and uses other cookies to help you have the best experience. By visiting this website, certain cookies have already been set, which you may delete and block. By closing this message or continuing to use our site, you agree to the use of cookies. Visit our updated privacy and cookie policy to learn more.
Architectural Record logo
search
cart
facebook twitter linkedin youtube
  • Sign In
  • Subscribe
  • Sign Out
  • My Account
Architectural Record logo
  • NEWS
    • Latest News
    • Interviews
    • Reviews
    • Commentary
    • Editorials
  • PROJECTS
    • Building Types
    • Interior Design
    • Museums & Arts Centers
    • Adaptive Reuse
    • Colleges & Universities
    • Lighting
    • Snapshot
  • HOUSES
    • Record Houses
    • House of the Month
    • Featured Houses
    • Kitchen and Bath
  • PRODUCTS
    • Material World
    • Categories
    • Award Winners
    • Case Studies
    • Partners in Design
    • Trends & Insights
  • EXCLUSIVES
    • Best Architecture Schools
    • Top 300 Firms
    • Theme Issues
    • Record Houses
    • Record Products
    • Good Design Is Good Business
    • Design Vanguard
    • Historical Archive
    • Cocktail Napkin Sketch
    • Videos
  • CALL FOR ENTRIES
    • Record Houses
    • Guess the Architect Contest
    • Submit Your Work
  • CONTINUING ED
    • Architectural Technology
    • Architect Continuing Education
    • Continuing Education Center
    • Digital Academies
  • EVENTS
    • Record on the Road
    • Innovation Conference
    • Women In Architecture
    • Webinars
    • Advertising Excellence Awards
  • MORE
    • Subscribe
    • Customer Service
    • Digital Edition
    • eNewsletter
    • Interactive Spotlight
    • Store
    • Custom Content Marketing
    • Research
    • Sponsor Insights
    • eBooks
  • CONTACT
    • Advertise
Home » Pierre Boulez Hall by Gehry Partners
Buildings by TypeProjectsPerforming Arts Center Projects

Pierre Boulez Hall by Gehry Partners

Berlin

Pierre Boulez Hall

The floating balcony of Pierre Boulez Hall hovers over the arena-like seating surrounding the stage, located 9 feet below entry level.

Photo © Roland Halbe

Pierre Boulez Hall

Pierre Boulez Hall occupies the east wing of the Barenboim-Said Academy, housed in the former scenery warehouse of the State Opera House Unter den Linden, a landmarked building.

Photo © Roland Halbe

Pierre Boulez Hall

Renovated by Berlin-based architect HG Merz, the lobby atrium of the Barenboim-Said Academy displays the existing steel structure and leads to the school and Pierre Boulez Hall. Lower-level seating retracts to allow for different stage configurations or to accommodate orchestra rehearsals.

Photo © Roland Halbe

Pierre Boulez Hall

Lower-level seating retracts to allow for different stage configurations or to accommodate orchestra rehearsals.

Photo © Roland Halbe

Pierre Boulez Hall

The windows of the landmarked facade are triple glazed to insulate against noise.

Photo © Roland Halbe

Pierre Boulez Hall

HG Merz exposed structural elements in the atrium.

Photo © Roland Halbe

Pierre Boulez Hall

Douglas fir doors by Gehry Partners lead into the concert hall.

Photo © Roland Halbe

Pierre Boulez Hall

Bowed acoustic glass panels hang from the balcony.

Photo © Roland Halbe

Pierre Boulez Hall

Views to the street were retained.

Photo © Roland Halbe

Pierre Boulez Hall

Image courtesy Gehry Partners

Pierre Boulez Hall

Image courtesy Gehry Partners

Pierre Boulez Hall

Image courtesy Gehry Partners

Pierre Boulez Hall

Image courtesy Gehry Partners

Pierre Boulez Hall

Image courtesy Gehry Partners

Pierre Boulez Hall

Image courtesy Gehry Partners

Pierre Boulez Hall

Image courtesy Gehry Partners

Pierre Boulez Hall

Photo © Till Schuster

Pierre Boulez Hall

Image courtesy Gehry Partners

Pierre Boulez Hall

Image courtesy Gehry Partners

Pierre Boulez Hall

Image courtesy Gehry Partners

Pierre Boulez Hall
Pierre Boulez Hall
Pierre Boulez Hall
Pierre Boulez Hall
Pierre Boulez Hall
Pierre Boulez Hall
Pierre Boulez Hall
Pierre Boulez Hall
Pierre Boulez Hall
Pierre Boulez Hall
Pierre Boulez Hall
Pierre Boulez Hall
Pierre Boulez Hall
Pierre Boulez Hall
Pierre Boulez Hall
Pierre Boulez Hall
Pierre Boulez Hall
Pierre Boulez Hall
Pierre Boulez Hall
Pierre Boulez Hall
February 28, 2017
Mary Pepchinski
KEYWORDS Berlin / Frank Gehry / Germany
Reprints
No Comments

Architects & Firms

Gehry Partners
 

Berlin is home to what is arguably the most influential concert hall of the 20th century, designed by Hans Scharoun for the city’s philharmonic orchestra and inaugurated in 1963. Smaller in scale than that 2,440-seat auditorium, Berlin’s newest music venue, Pierre Boulez Hall (a tribute to the late French composer and conductor) may be nearly as impressive in form and context.

Additional Information:
Jump to credits & specifications

Designed by Frank Gehry, the 683-seat hall is part of the Barenboim-Said Academy (BSA), a new conservatory founded by maestro Daniel Barenboim to foster communication through music. The school, which trains young musicians from the Middle East, North Africa, and around the world, was named for Barenboim and his colleague Edward Said, the late American-Palestinian scholar, with whom he established the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in 1999 to enable young Palestinian and Israeli musicians to play together.

In 2012, when Barenboim invited Gehry to design the venue in the building that houses the school, the architect accepted—and waived his fee. A friend of Barenboim and Said, as well as Boulez, he too wanted to help people overcome their differences and connect, sensing that a performance space was the perfect staging place to help accomplish this. “People talk more easily to one another through the arts,” says Gehry, noting how he has observed this at meetings in the Gulf region with people from diverse backgrounds when the subject turns to culture.

The BSA, which opened in the fall of 2016, occupies the former scenery warehouse of the Staatsoper (State Opera House) Unter den Linden, a landmarked Neobaroque monument rebuilt in the early 1950s after being destroyed during World War II. The building, refurbished by the German firm HG Merz, fronts a side street in the Mitte district, now a hub of government, educational, and cultural institutions. The entry leads to a small central atrium, raised 3 feet above street level. From there, visitors can access both the school and Pierre Boulez Hall.

Located within the building’s east wing, the concert hall features a flexible stage for performances by soloists and ensembles, and rehearsal space for the 90-member West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. According to Gehry, during the design phase, he initially “kept drawing an oval” within the regular plan, a square box with walls measuring about 80 feet in length. While he eventually rejected this idea for a more conventional layout, with sloped seating on risers facing performers on a stage, Barenboim urged him to return to the oval.

The resulting structure contains two distinct elliptical elements. The axis of the lower level roughly aligns along the hall’s northeast–southwest diagonal. Five rows of concentric seating step down 9 feet from the hall’s entry level to an arena-like floor. The bottom four rows can retract to accommodate a full orchestra; freestanding chairs and a compact conventional platform can also be added when smaller groups perform. The axis of the upper level shifts slightly and is almost parallel to the east and west facades. Designed as a “floating” balcony, the elliptical ring has an undulating section and is largely independent of the walls. Audience members, either seated on the two rows in the balcony or throughout the lower level, are at a maximum of 46 feet from the center of the stage.

The concert hall is akin to a “building in a building,” says Gehry partner Craig Webb, project designer. The existing interior walls and slabs were gutted, new foundations were laid, and a steel-and-reinforced concrete structure was inserted on the periphery. Four beams, one on each side, tie the floating balcony, constructed as a hollow, reinforced-concrete truss with a trapezoidal section, to the new structure. Douglas fir panels cover the ceiling, walls, and balcony.

Other decisions marry design elements with the need to optimize sound quality. Los Angeles–based acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota, who worked with Gehry on the Walt Disney Concert Hall, suggested an interior height of 46 feet to create enough volume for a full orchestra. Unlike a balcony in a typical concert hall, the one here is detached from the walls, so bowed glass sheets were hung beneath the eastern and western edges to return sound to the musicians. Because the architects insisted on keeping the windows transparent to insure seamless views to the city, three layers of glass in the deep window casings provide sound isolation. The creamy Alaskan yellow-cedar stage floor was selected because it is extremely resonant and enhances the sound of instruments that touch it, like cellos or pianos. When the light from the adjustable-LED Tungsten fixtures bathes the surface, “the whole room glows from this central focus” says Webb.

For all its technical finesse and adventurous form, Pierre Boulez Hall is an unexpectedly emotional and atmospheric place. The balcony hovering above the columnless volume directs one’s gaze toward the windows, out to the city. There is a sense of freedom and of endless possibilities, even hope. Moving closer to the center, the design recalls a clearing in the forest, the stage being a luminous pond with the floating balcony as a ring of treetops, imparting an aura of security and enclosure.

“It is a special place,” says Ole Baekhoej, the hall’s artistic director. “It has a community feeling, with everyone seated together around the musicians. It is not a ‘them versus us’ layout, but all of us together.”


Credits

Architect:

Gehry Partners (Pierre Boulez Hall) —
Frank Gehry, design principal; Craig Webb, project
designer; Laurence Tighe, managing partner; Gesa
Buettner, project architect. HG Merz (Barenboim-Said
Academy
 

 

Executive Architect:

RW+ Architekten

 

Engineers:

GSE Ingenieur-Gesellschaft (structural)

 

Consultants:

Nagata Acoustics America (acoustics);
L’Observatoire (lighting design); Ingenieurbüro Schaller
(theater); Teamproject (project manager)

 

Client:

Barenboim-Said Academy

 

Size:

10,660 square feet

 

Completion date:

March 2017 

 

Specifications

Glass

Guardian Glass (curved acoustical fins)

Seating

Seda Sport (fixed audience seats designed by
Gehry Partners);

Wilde Spieth (freestanding chairs)

Textiles

Serge Ferrari (acoustical);

Maharam, Kvadrat (custom fabric for audience seats designed by
Gehry Partners)

 

AR Subscribe

Recent Articles by Mary Pepchinski

Design Vanguard 2019: Pool Leber

David Chipperfield Architects Berlin Completes Second Phase of Neue Nationalgalerie Renovation

IGS Kalbach-Riedberg by NKBAK

Mary Pepchinski is an author and teaches architectural theory at the Technical University Dresden.

Related Articles

Music Melds With Architecture at Frank Gehry’s 90th Birthday Party in Berlin

High Street Residence Hall by Deborah Berke Partners

You must login or register in order to post a comment.

Report Abusive Comment

More Videos

AR Tremco Webinar


 


 

Events

December 17, 2019

Minimizing Risk in Blindside Waterproofing Applications

Credits: 1 AIA LU/Elective; 1 AIBD P-CE; 0.1 IACET CEU

May qualify for learning hours through most Canadian architectural associations

This course will identify blindside waterproofing product technologies, their differences, the criteria for product performance, and how to design a waterproofing system accordingly. Best practices for mitigating application risks and managing critical areas prone to moisture infiltration will be reviewed, including the sequence of installation and for detailing failure points.

January 15, 2020

Contemporary and Comfortable Designs Using Natural Stone

Credits: 1 AIA LU/Elective; 1 AIBD P-CE; 0.1 IACET CEU

May qualify for learning hours through most Canadian architectural associations

Natural stone is durable, sustainable, and as a currently sought-after design aesthetic, can increase a home’s value. Stone is a material that also never goes out of style! The projects presented in this webinar demonstrate the uses of several types of natural stone, emphasizing the many ways it can be used to create a contemporary and comfortable living or working space.
 

View All Submit An Event

Products

ENR Square Foot Costbook 2020

ENR Square Foot Costbook 2020

See More Products

Tweets by @ArchRecord

Architectural Record

AR December 2019 Cover

2019 December

In the December 2019 issue, Architectural Record reveals the winners of the annual Record Products contest.

View More Subscribe
  • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Survey And Sample
    • Editorial Calendar
  • Call for Entries
  • Subscribe
    • Subscribe
    • Renew
    • Create Account
    • Change Address
    • Pay My Bill
    • Free eNewsletters
    • Customer Care
  • Advertise
    • Architectural Record
    • Advertising Awards
  • Industry Jobs

Copyright ©2019. All Rights Reserved BNP Media.

Design, CMS, Hosting & Web Development :: ePublishing