The customer was pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim: the hall will become part of his Barenboim-Said Academy, which opened in autumn 2016. Students from the Middle East will study music and the humanities for free at this university under the bachelor's program for four years. The Academy developed the idea of the West-East Divan Orchestra: since 1999 young musicians from Israel and Palestine have been playing there, and the founders of the group were Barenboim himself and the American-Palestinian literary critic Edward Said.
The new concert hall is intended for student rehearsals and performances, chamber music concerts, lectures, conferences, etc. It is named after the French composer Pierre Boulez, who died in January 2016, and was friends with both Barenboim and the hall's architect Frank Gehry.
The hall is located in the very center of Berlin, in the former storehouse of the State Opera, built in the early 1950s: Gehry was responsible for the architectural design, and Yasuhisa Toyota, the largest specialist in this field, for acoustics. They both worked for free.
The space of 990 m2 is designed for an audience of up to 682 people. Places located on two levels (upper - bunk balcony) can be partially removed, changing the general configuration. The audience is as close as possible to the performers: the maximum distance between them is 14 meters; for solo performances, the seats of the first row are placed directly on the stage, the border of which with the rest of the hall, however, is blurred.
The interior is clad in Douglas fir wood. The seats and fabrics are also designed by Frank Gehry. Triple-glazed windows (for noise protection) visually connect the hall with the surrounding city, as well as the atrium lobby. The project budget was 33.7 million euros (including premises for the academy).
The program of the first season is called "Music for the Thinking Ear" and consists of more than 60 concerts: it covers classical and romantic composers, masters of the 20th century and today, including the planned world premiere of the work of Jörg Widmann.
