The secluded 1950s Old Festival Hall in Earl has long been a symbol of the city thanks to its amazingly picturesque sculptural form. The building firmly "holds" the space around it. The new building, designed by the Delugan Meissl architects, is boldly set opposite: both halls "meet" as equal partners, react to each other and mutually reinforce the artistic impact. Both halls - summer and winter - form an ensemble, without interfering with the self-expression of each individually.
The geometry of the new building, located at the foot of the hill, stems from the characteristics of the surrounding landscape: its dynamic shape simultaneously responds to the diagonal gesture of its older brother and the steep line of the mountain slope. The concert hall is raised on an asymmetrical base: to get to the foyer, you need to climb a large solemn staircase leading to the main floor. The glazed foyer seems to be squeezed by the gray bulk of the overhanging roof and base. At night it looks like a luminous crack or rift in the rock, as if inviting with its light to enter inside.
The architects continue "topographic" conformity to the landscape inside the building. Here, their main tasks were the connection between the interior and the environment and the functional organization of the international level concert hall concentrated in space. The asymmetrical space of the hall, due to its transparency, gives rise to a wide range of impressions from the surrounding nature and architecture of the summer hall facing the building. Spacious public spaces, narrowing and expanding and changing the height of the ceilings, translate architectural geometry into sensually comprehensible.
The hall itself, shaped like a shell, is located in the center of the building. From behind it is as if "planted" on the ledge of the hill, into which the building crashes. The passage from the hall to the concert hall is accompanied by spatial transformations: the dynamics, variability and asymmetry of the hall give way to the world of statics and orthogonality in the auditorium. The wooden surfaces in the decoration of the hall and the warm color create a comfortable space that helps to focus on the spectacle.
Multifunctional technical filling and the possibility of transforming the hall make it possible to use the building for a variety of events, in addition to the traditional concert program.
N. K.
