The Passionspielhaus designed by Delugan Meissl Architects is a summer opera and music venue set in the beautiful alpine mountains of the Tyrol in Austria.
The festival hall’s geometry develops from the surrounding topography placing the building and the already existing festival hall in juxtaposition. The orientation relates to the existing landscape, the dynamic gesture of the historical counterpart, as well as the background of rock formations.
The topographic imprinting in the landscape continues inside the building where two central parameters direct the architectural approach: the interplay between the building’s interior and the surrounding nature as well as a lading concert hall of international repute.
Architectural conditions in the building’s interior are devolved into a subtle control of the motion sequences through their sensual perception. The access staircase is integrated into the terrain’s topography and leads visitors into the building’s interior.
The foyer allows a wide range of impressions of the surrounding natural environment as well as to the existing summer festival hall. In the opposite direction, a staircase leads to the gallery on the level above where the relationship between interior and exterior relations is once again impressively experienced by the extensively glass-fronted western façade.
The concert hall, which is situated at the centre of the building like a shell and is anchored to the rock at the back, is connected to the foyer via two accesses on each level. The passage from the foyer into the concert hall is accompanied by a spatial and atmospheric transformation: Dynamics, variability and asymmetry of the foyer give way to static peace and orthogonality.
