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Austrian firm Coop Himmelb(l)au has completed a major new concert venue and music school in the Danish city of Aalborg, which claims to be “one of the quietest spaces for symphonic music in Europe” (+ slideshow).

Located on the edge of the Limfjord – the body of water that bounds the city – the House of Music was designed by Coop Himmelb(l)au as a cultural hub that accommodates both a 1300-seat performance venue and a music college.

The architect worked closely with an acoustic consultant to develop a curvaceous auditorium that will offer exemplary acoustics. This is encased within a U-shaped volume that contains the classrooms and rehearsal areas of the school.

“The idea behind the building can already be read from the outer shape. The school embraces the concert hall,” said Coop Himmelb(l)au principal Wolf D. Prix.

Externally, the building’s facade is a composition of boxy volumes, undulating roof canopies, circular windows and latticed walls of glazing.

According to Prix the design is intended to represent the unity between music and architecture: “Music is the art of striking a chord in people directly. Like the body of musical instruments this architecture serves as a resonance body for the creativity in the House of Music.”

Visitors enter through a five-storey-high atrium with a concrete staircase winding up through its centre. This provides access to different levels of the auditorium, but also leads to an observation area facing out over the fjord.

Windows within the interior offer glimpsed views into the auditorium from the surrounding spaces. There are also three smaller performance spaces located underneath the foyer.

Water-filled pipes run through the concrete floor slab to provide heating in winter and help keep the building cool in summer. This will be controlled as part of an intelligent building management system.

The House of Music opened with a thirteen-day extravaganza of concerts, performances, film and fireworks.

Scroll down for the project description from Coop Himmelb(l)au:

House of Music as a creative centre for Aalborg

After four years of construction, the “House of Music” in Aalborg, Denmark was ceremoniously opened on March 29, 2014 by the Danish Queen Margrethe II.

This cultural centre was designed by the Viennese architectural studio Coop Himmelb(l)au as a combined school and concert hall: its open structure promotes the exchange between the audience and artists, and the students and teachers.

U-shaped rehearsal and training rooms are arranged around the core of the ensemble, a concert hall for about 1,300 visitors. A generous foyer connects these spaces and opens out with a multi-storey window area onto an adjacent cultural space and a fjord. Under the foyer, three more rooms of various sizes complement the space: the intimate hall, the rhythmic hall, and the classic hall. Through multiple observation windows, students and visitors can look into the concert hall from the foyer and the practice rooms and experience the musical events, including concerts and rehearsals.

The concert hall

The flowing shapes and curves of the auditorium inside stand in contrast to the strict, cubic outer shape. The seats in the orchestra and curved balconies are arranged in such a way that offers the best possible acoustics and views of the stage. The highly complex acoustic concept was developed in collaboration with Tateo Nakajima at Arup. The design of the amorphous plaster structures on the walls and the height-adjustable ceiling suspensions, based on the exact calculations of the specialist in acoustics, ensures for the optimal listening experience. The concert hall will be one of the quietest spaces for symphonic music in Europe, with a noise-level reduction of NR10 (GK10). Thanks to its architectural and acoustic quality, the concert hall is already well-booked: there will be concerts featuring the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra with violin soloist Arabella Steinbacher and the Danish National Radio Orchestra with soprano Mojca Erdmann in April.

The foyer

The foyer serves as a meeting place for students, artists, teachers, and visitors. Five stories high with stairs, observation balconies, and large windows with views of the fjord, it is a lively, dynamic space that can be used for a wide variety of activities.

The energy concept

Instead of fans, the foyer uses the natural thermal buoyancy in the large vertical space for ventilation. Water-filled hypocaust pipes in the concrete floor slab are used for cooling in summer and heating in winter. The concrete walls around the concert hall act as an additional storage capacity for thermal energy. The fjord is also used for cost-free cooling.

The piping and air vents are equipped with highly efficient rotating heat exchangers. Very efficient ventilation systems with low air velocities are attached under the seats in the concert hall. Air is extracted through a ceiling grid above the lighting system so that any heat produced does not cause a rise in the temperature in the room.

The building is equipped with a building management program that controls the equipment in the building and ensures that no system is active when there is no need for it. In this way, energy consumption is minimised.

Planning: Coop Himmelb(l)au, Wolf D. Prix & Partner ZT GmbH
Design Principal/ CEO: Wolf D. Prix
Project Partner: Michael Volk
Design Architect: Luzie Giencke
Project Architect: Marcelo Bernardi, Pete Rose
Design Architect Interior: Eva Wolf

Local Architects: Friis & Moltke, Aalborg, Denmark
Acoustics, Audio-Visual & Theatre Design and Planning Consultant: Arup, New York, USA
Landscape Architect: Jeppe Aagaard Andersen, Helsingør, Denmark
Structural Engineering: Rambøll, Aalborg, Denmark;
B+G Ingenieure, Bollinger und Grohmann GmbH, Frankfurt, Germany
Mechanical, Electrical and Fire Engineering: Nirás, Aalborg, Denmark
Cost consultant: Davis Langdon LLP, London, UK
Lighting Design Consultant: Har Hollands, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Interior Design Consultant: Eichinger Offices, Vienna, Austria

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invites orchestras to Aalborg appeared first on Dezeen.

Austrian firm Coop Himmelb(l)au has completed the Dalian International Conference Center, a contorted steel building in China with conference halls bursting through its facade.

The conference centre is constructed beside the harbour in the city of Dalian. Positioned at the far end of the city’s main axis, the building was conceived as a landmark for the developing district outside the densely populated centre.

Coop Himmelb(l)au designed the building as a twisted mass of steel and concrete, with ridged surfaces that flare outwards like the gills of a bulbous fish. Behind these openings, large areas of glazing bring natural light inside.

The core of the building is a 1600-seat theatre and concert hall. The primary conference room is positioned just behind and can accommodate up to 2500 delegates, but can also be adapted to provide a banqueting hall, an exhibition gallery or extra seating for the concert hall.

Six additional conference suites are dotted around the perimeter of the building and cantilever out beyond the natural line of the exterior walls. The capacity of these rooms varies between 300 and 600 people, but most can be subdivided to create smaller spaces.

A public foyer winds through the building to connect each room, and also features a central meeting area.

Coop Himmelb(l)au won a competition in 2008 to design the Dalian International Conference Center. Construction commenced later that year and involved the help of shipbuilders, who were brought in to bend the massive steel plates of the outer shell.

Coop Himmelb(l)au is led by architect Wolf D. Prix, who last summer launched a scathing attack on the Venice Architecture Biennale for placing too much emphasis on celebrity. His studio also recently completed another grand-scale project in Asia – the Busan Cinema Centre in South Korea, which features a cantilever wider than the wings of an Airbus A380. See more architecture by Coop Himmelb(l)au.

Another major building proposed for Dalian in recent years was the football stadium designed by UNStudio, but this project has now been put on hold. See more stories about architecture in China.

Photography is by Duccio Malagamba.

Here’s a more detailed project description from Coop Himmelb(l)au:

Dalian International Conference Center, Dalian, China (2008-2012)

The building has both to reflect the promising modern future of Dalian and its tradition as an important port, trade, industry and tourism city. The formal language of the project combines and merges the rational structure and organization of its modern conference center typology with the floating spaces of modernist architecture.

Dalian is an important seaport, industrial, trade, and tourism center, located in the southernmost part of the Liaodong Peninsula in the Chinese Liaoning Province. The city is currently undergoing a wave of transformation on coastal brownfield and reclaimed land which will entirely change the city’s face within the next decade.

The key developments are:

» Dislocation of container port away from the dense city area
» Establishment of international port for cruise ships
» New development of a “CBD – Central Business District” on reclaimed land
» Bridge over the sea to connect with the special economic zone

The urban design task of the Dalian International Conference Center is to create an instantly recognizable landmark at the terminal point of the future extension of the main city axis. As its focal point the building will be anchored in the mental landscape of the population and the international community. The footprint of the building on the site is therefore arranged in accordance with the orientation of the two major urban axis which merge in front of the building. The cantilevering conference spaces that penetrate the facades create a spatially multifaceted building volume and differentiate the close surroundings. The various theaters and conference spaces are covered by a cone-shaped roof screen. Through controlled daylight input good spatial orientation for the visitors and atmospheric variety is assured.

The project combines the following functions within one hybrid building with synergetic effects of functionality and spatial richness.

» Conference Center
» Theater and Opera House
» Exhibition Center
» Basement with Parking, Delivery and Disposal

A public zone at ground level allows for differentiating accessibility for the different groups of users. The actual performance and conference spaces are situated at +15.30 m above the entrance hall. The grand theater, with a capacity of 1,600 seats and a stage tower, and the directly adjacent flexible conference hall of 2,500 seats, are positioned at the core of the building. With this arrangement the main stage can be used for the classical theater auditorium as well as for the flexible multipurpose hall. The main auditorium is additionally equipped with backstage areas like in traditional theaters and opera houses. This scheme is appropriate to broaden the range of options for the use of this space: from convention, musical, theater even up to classical opera, with very little additional investment.

The smaller conference spaces are arranged like pearls around this core, providing very short connections between the different areas, thus saving time while changing between the different units. Most conference rooms and the circulation areas have direct daylight from above. Through this open and fluid arrangement the theater and conference spaces on the main level establish a kind of urban structure with “squares” and “street spaces”. These identifiable “addresses” facilitate user orientation within the building. Thus the informal meeting places, as well as chill-out and catering zones, and in between the halls, gardens with view connection to outside are provided as required for modern conference utilization. The access to the basement parking garage, truck delivery and waste disposal is located at the southwest side of the site, thus freeing the front driveway to the entrances from transit traffic. The main entrance from the sea side corresponds to the future developments, including the connection to the future cruise terminal.

Technical, Climatic and Environmental Concept

The focus of the architectural design and project development lies on technology, construction and their interplay. The technical systems fulfil the tasks required for the spatial use of the building automatically, invisibly and silently.

With the Dalian International Dalian Conference Center, these systems work like a hybrid city within a building. For the technical infrastructure of the building this means, that we have to consider a huge amount of people circulating inside the building at the same time, who expect high standards in circulation and comfort as well as a state of the art building with respect to high flexibility, low energy consumption and low use of natural resources.

Technical areas in the basement supply infrastructure within a rectangular grid, mainly inside the vertical cores. In particularly the conference zone has to be provided with a sufficient amount of air in order to maintain a high level of thermal and acoustical comfort. Therefore the conditioned air will be silently injected into the rooms via an inflated double flooring underneath the seating. Air blowout units inside the stairs will ensure consistent air distribution. Due to the thermal uplift, the heat of the people ascends to the ceiling and is extracted by suction.

Above: ground floor plan – click for larger image

One of the major tasks of sustainable architecture is the minimisation of energy consumption. A fundamental contribution is to avoid considerable fluctuations in demands during the course of the day. Therefore it is essential to integrate the natural resources of the environment like:

» Use the thermal energy of seawater with heat pumps for cooling in summer and heating in winter
» General use of low temperature systems for heating in combination with activation of the concrete core as thermal mass in order to keep the building on constant temperature
» Natural ventilation of the huge air volumes within the building allows for minimization of the mechanical apparatus for ventilation heating and cooling. The atrium is conceived as a solar heated, naturally ventilated sub climatic area.
» In the large volume individual areas can be treated separately by additional measures such as displacement ventilation
» A high degree of daylight use is aspired both for its positive psychological effect and for minimizing the power consumption for artificial lighting
» Energy production with solar energy panels integrated into the shape of the building.

Above: first floor plan – click for larger image

Structural Concept

The structural concept is based on a sandwich structure composed of 2 elements: the “table” and the roof. Both elements are steel space frames with depths ranging between 5 and 8 meters. The whole structure is elevated 7 meters above ground level and is supported by 14 vertical composite steel and concrete cores. A doubly ruled façade structure connects the two layers of table and roof, creating a load-bearing shell structure. The application of new design and simulation techniques, the knowledge of local shipbuilders to bend massive steel plates, and the consumption of more than 40,000 tons of steel enables breathtaking spans of over 85 meters and cantilevering of over 40 meters.

Above: second floor plan – click for larger image

Planning: COOP HIMMELB(L)AU – Wolf D. Prix / W. Dreibholz & Partner ZT GmbH
Design Principal: Wolf D. Prix
Project Partner: Paul Kath (until 2010), Wolfgang Reicht
Project Architect: Wolfgang Reicht
Design Architect: Alexander Ott
Design Team: Quirin Krumbholz, Eva Wolf, Victoria Coaloa

Above: third floor plan – click for larger image

Local Partner: DADRI Dalian Institute of Architecture Design and Research Co. LTD, UD Studio, J&A Interior Design

Above: fourth floor plan – click for larger image

Client: Dalian Municipal People’s Government, P.R. China
Structural Engineering: B+G Ingenieure, Bollinger Grohmann Schneider ZT-GmbH, DADRI Dalian Institute of Architecture Design and Research Co. LTD
Acoustics: Müller-BBM, Planegg
Stage Design: BSEDI Beijing Special Engineering Design and Research Institute
Lighting Design: a•g Licht, Wilfried Kramb

Above: fifth floor plan – click for larger image

Audio & Video: CRFTG Radio, Film and Television Design & Research Institute
Climatic Design: Prof. Brian Cody
HVAC, Sprinkler: Reinhold A. Bacher, DADRI Dalian Institute of Architecture Design and Research Co. LTD
Façade: Meinhardt Facade Technology Ltd.
Photovoltaic: Baumgartner GmbH
General Contractor: China Construction Eight Engineering Division

Above: sixth floor plan – click for larger image

Competition: 03/2008
Start of Planning: 07/2008
Start of Construction: 11/2008
Completion: 2012

Above: reflected ceiling plan – click for larger image

Site Area: 40,000 sqm
Gross Floor Area Conference Center: 91,250 sqm
Gross Floor Area Parking: 24,400 sqm
Gross Floor Area total: 117,650 sqm
Footprint: 33,000 sqm

Above: top view – click for larger image

Building Height: 60 m
Building Length: 220 m
Building Width: 200 m
Number of Floors: 8

Above: functional options – click for larger image

Above: climate design – click for larger image

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by Coop Himmelb(l)au appeared first on Dezeen.

Dezeen Wire: architect Wolf D. Prix of Coop Himmelb(l)au has launched a scathing attack on the Venice Architecture Biennale, claiming it’s “no longer about lively discussion and criticism of topics in contemporary architecture” but places too much importance on celebrity.

In a statement sent as a press release entitled The Banal, he says that participating architects are “playing” while the profession is “sinking into powerlessness and irrelevance” at the hands of politicians, investors and bureaucrats who “have been deciding on our built environment for a long time now”.

Prix would have preferred a “look behind the scenes at the decision-making, instead of boring exhibitions”, giving controversial plans to redevelop Stuttgart train station, the spiralling cost of Herzog & de Meuron’s Elbphilharmonie concert hall and political disputes about mosques and minarets as examples of good topics.

He also criticises biennale director David Chipperfield for encouraging cooperation with the authorities rather than resistance, calling his theme of Common Ground a “compromise” that “cannot get any worse”.

Assistant director of the biennale Kieran Long responded by tweeting “I think if Wolf Prix hates you, you are doing something right,” while Charles Holland of London architects FAT, who created a Museum of Copying for the Aersenale exhibition, tweeted “Wolf Prix say hello to black kettle. Kettle, say hi to famous pot Wolf Prix.”

In his opening speech at the press conference on Monday Chipperfield claimed “this biennale isn’t an X Factor of who’s hot right now”, a sentiment also expressed in our movie interview in which he urges the profession to turn away from iconic one-off projects like opera houses, theatres and museums, and address “the 99.99% of the rest of the world which architects are not dealing with” before they’re relegated to being “urban decorators.”

See all our stories about the Venice Architecture Biennale »
See all our stories about Coop Himmelb(l)au »

Portrait is by Elfie Semotan.

Here’s the full statement from Wolf D. Prix:

The Banal

Praise be to Nero’s Neptune.
The Titanic sails at dawn.
And everybody’s shouting
“Which Side Are You on?”
(Bob Dylan: “Desolation Row”, 1966)

If one did not know that the media constantly exaggerates, one could almost conclude – as the Süddeutsche Zeitung has – that the Venice Biennale of Architecture really is the world’s most important architecture exhibition.

However, I believe that the word “exhibition” is not intended to describe an exhibition in this case, rather that the notion only designates the event per se. In other words an industry meeting, like a product fair. Other critics fail to even question the purpose of the exhibition, rather they immediately conclude that the coming together, the meeting, the networking is the key aspect. That’s that!

I would like to maintain at this juncture that the meaning of the Venice Biennale of Architecture for theoretical arguments has been increasingly losing significance since its beginnings with the Strada Novissima by Paolo Portoghesi in 1980. Even the personal significance for the participants is very low when compared to the Art Biennale. So let us not deny the truth. This event is an expensive danse macabre. In a city of plunder (an exhibition of plunder) hordes of tourists (architects) roll along broken infrastructure in order to satisfy their petit bourgeois desire for education (in the case of the architects: vanity, envy, schadenfreude, suspicions). Even the glamour that the visitors are supposed to feel is staid and faked by the media for whom a star architect is like a film star.

In truth it is all hollow, arduous, exhausting, bleak and boring. It is no longer about lively discussion and criticism of topics in contemporary architecture, but rather about empty, conservative and perhaps populist shells that are charged with feigned meaning. What a great Architecture Biennale it would have been had they established forums and put out themes which would have provided a chance to look behind the scenes at the decision-making, instead of boring exhibitions. Take for example the dispute about the train station in Stuttgart. The reasons for the cost explosion for prominent buildings such as, for example, the Elbe Philharmonic Hall. The political arguments about mosques and minarets, in other words the disputes about the localisation of an idea. Why the market for single-family homes in the USA has collapsed and how power politics is conducted through settlement architecture. These topics would be worthy of discussion – not who is and who is not a star architect.

However, instead of that we face: “People Meet in Architecture” and now “Common Ground”. In other words: compromise. It cannot get any worse!

This situation conjures an image of the Venetian carnival – one can imagine all the architects in Pierrot costumes surrounded by masked critics and dancing the Dance Banale, or, even better, the architects are playing on a sinking gondola like erstwhile the orchestra on the Titanic playing their last song, while outside in the real world our leaky trade is sinking into powerlessness and irrelevance. This is because politicians and project managers, investors and bureaucrats have been deciding on our built environment for a long time now. Not the architects.

While in Russia artists are stubbornly resisting the authoritarian regime, the current director of the Architecture Biennale considers these characteristics to be obstacles for our profession and he explains in an interview that space must be taken from the genius. One would have to show him Pussy Riots in order for him to finally understand our society.

Furthermore, I consider that the Venice Biennale of Architecture needs to be reorganised.

Wolf D. Prix / COOP HIMMELB(L)AU

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Architects Coop Himmelb(l)au of Vienna have won a competition to design a new parliamentary building in Tirana for the Republic of Albania.

The parliamentary hall will be housed in a central glazed cone and members of the public will be able to access the roof of the building plinth to look down into the hall.

The project also includes a cone-shaped entrance hall and block of offices.

More about Coop Himmelb(l)au on Dezeen »

The following details are from Coop Himmelb(l)au:

COOP HIMMELB(L)AU’s winning scheme for ‘The New Parliamentary Complex of the Republic of Albania’ officially confirmed

Wolf D. Prix/ COOP HIMMELB(L)AU presents the new ‘Open Parliament of Albania’ in Tirana which incorporates fundamental democratic values such as openness, transparency and public co-determination. The building, located on a site area with approximately 28,000 m2, is going to be the first project in Albania for the Viennese headquartered studio.

“Our design for the new Parliament in Tirana, Albania, stands for the transparency of democracy”, according to Wolf D. Prix, Design Principal and CEO of COOP HIMMELB(L)AU.

Architectural Concept

As the future political center of the Albanian Republic, the Open Parliament of Albania creates an outstanding architectural landmark in one of the main parts of Tirana’s urban fabric. Situated along the compositional axis of the city, it is located in vicinity to the major governmental institutions.

The design for the Open Parliament of Albania relies on three main ideas:

• To provide a strong urban statement in this exposed part of Tirana’s urban fabric;
• To assemble the different functions in one building ensemble that is compact enough to create a public forum and a park on the southern part of the site;
• To create a unique building for the most important public institution of the Albanian Republic with a contemporary architectural approach shaped to optimize active and passive energy use.

The design incorporates fundamental democratic values such as openness, transparency and public co-determination. The simultaneity of competing political concepts within a democratic society is translated into the design concept: Different building elements are not opposed, but coexist in one building ensemble with a contemporary aesthetic that allows visualizing new functions and meanings.

The core of the building complex is the parliamentary hall that is situated in a glazed cone and stands for the transparency of the legislation. A public stair leads from the public forum to the landscaped roof of the plinth building that unites all the different building elements of our design: Office block, entrance structure and parliamentary hall. From the plinth the public is able to look into the parliamentary hall even from the outside.

The main entrance is designed as a massive cone, which creates an impressive space and acts as the counterpart to the glazed parliamentary hall.

Energy Concept

The new parliamentary building for the Republic of Albania is designed to capture the natural resources and energy flows of its surroundings and employ them to provide optimal environmental conditions for its occupants. The special configuration of the building form and the optimization of the building envelope together with the use of renewable energy sources ensure an energy efficient design and reduce reliance on fossil fuel energy sources. The office building is covered with a second skin made of perforated steel that is specially configured to improve building performance related to optimum daylight use, views, solar control, glare protection, thermal insulation, natural ventilation and noise protection.

See also:

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Town Town by Coop Himmelb(l)au	Pavilion MINI Opera Space by Coop Himmelb(l)au	Art Museum Strongoli by Coop Himmelb(l)au

Austrian architects Coop Himmelb(l)au have designed an energy-generating canopy for a passageway in Perugia, Italy. (more…)