Guest User | Login / Register

What is WIDN

The World Interior Design Network is the leading global resource for the interior design industry brought to you by World Market Intelligence, one of the world's foremost publishers of interior design information

Find out more

Product Inspiration

Browse our interior design product showcase, one of the largest and fastest growing collections of premium interior design products on the Internet.

Find out more

Industry Research

World Market Intelligence publishes in-depth strategic intelligence reports, drawing on in-depth primary and secondary research, proprietary databases and high quality analysis from our expert teams.

Find out more

Wave to the crowd

Published: 14-May-2009

Ten years in the making the Mumuth Music Theatre in Graz is a symphony of sinuous shapes, rising and falling like musical notes. Both the client and designer Unstudio held their nerve to see the project through.

Related Image

Suppliers to this sector

There’s hardly a straight line to be seen inside the Mumuth Music Theatre, a new performance and educational facility for the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz, Austria.

As chief architects Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos of Dutch practice UNStudio say, ‘This is a building in which music lives,’ and where music has been hugely influential on design. A gently curving facade of glass and steel envelops a stunning interior where twisting crescendos of concrete, rising, falling and returning to familiar themes and movements, recall the dynamics of a symphony. ‘The relationship between music and architecture is a classical one,’ explains Bos, and UNStudio ‘likes classical with a twist’.

It was a decade ago that UNStudio beat 212 other entrants in competition to design the theatre. According to van Berkel, his enthusiasm for the relationship between music and design helped win the contract, but public funding was not as easy to come by. There were times, says van Berkel, ‘when the design just seemed too ambitious’. Financial setbacks meant that construction didn’t begin until 2006, some eight years after UNStudio had begun work on the design, ‘but eventually we were able to assure the client that we could do this project within budget’ says van Berkel.

The building employs what van Berkel calls ‘inclusive sustainability’, meaning that aesthetics and functionality are not compromised but enhanced by environmental sustainability. For example, the glittering steel mesh of the building’s facade, beautiful in its own right, also prevents energy waste through heat loss.

According to van Berkel, the graphic on the building’s windows, inspired by musical notation, also limits glare from the sun. This pattern is repeated throughout the building and used extensively in the auditorium, one of the only areas inside the building where the glass of the facade is not visible.

Concrete predominates in the stunning foyer and public areas. The material allowed UNStudio to create a remarkably, capacious and organic-looking interior, without using supporting columns. This was made possible by a dramatic twist of concrete that connects the ground floor with the first of three upper floors.

Following the line of this concrete structure is a staircase, clad in polished steel. It was one of van Berkel’s most challenging projects, necessitating the use of self-compacting concrete, which was pumped up from below instead of being poured from above, which is more usual.

In the early stages of design, this part of the building was envisaged as an ‘elongated spring of varying diameters’, says van Berkel, ‘which would alternately be stretched, compressed and folded up inside itself’. The concept then morphed into a series of loose spirals that now contain the main foyer, ticket booth, toilets, dressingrooms and five rehearsal rooms. Spotlights in the ceiling illuminate this area, and are reflected in the terrazzo floor.

The articulated, sculptural form of the foyer and other public spaces contrasts with the more sedate architecture of the rehearsal rooms and main auditorium, the part of the project which Van Berkel is most proud of and describes as ‘working on many levels’.

The walls are decorated with the same motif as on the facade, but here it appears as a relief pattern cut into wood. Inside the walls, acoustic panels made from layers of MDF absorb echo. The stage shape can be altered and brought closer to an audience for more intimate performances, with more than 100 motorised platforms allowing each section of the stage to be reconfigured. ‘It is possible to modify the entire auditorium area by the push of a button,’ says van Berkel. Some 224 spotlights operated by a control panel illuminate the auditorium.

The driving force behind the project was the ‘desire to make a building that is as much about music as a building can be’, says van Berkel. ‘That has been a constant throughout the nearly 10 years it took to build it,’ he says.

It may have been a long wait, but for the students who get to compose, practice and perform in this fabulous building, it will surely be an inspiration.

This article was first published in FX Magazine.

Mail sent successfully

Tell your friend about this article

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter your name

Your Name: *

Your Email: *

Friend's Email: *

Email Body: *: I thought you would be interested in this article : http://www.worldinteriordesignnetwork.com/comments/wave_to_the_crowd_090514/

Other Relevant WMI Sites: