Completed in 2014 by Spanish/Italian duo Barozzi Veiga, the Philharmonic Concert Hall is located in the heart of the Polish city of Szczecin.
The Philharmonic Hall, designed to accommodate a symphony hall and a chamber music hall, is a very complex building occupying the same space as its predecessor. This is a synthetic design that shares identifying elements from the surrounding context, and where mass, verticality and the shape of the rooflines predominate.
The building is charged with expressive power, concentrated in the pattern that gives shape to the roof and its crowning perimeter. This power is the result of the influence of certain Central European expressionist architectures. From the outside, the building is perceived as a weightless volume in which the aluminium and glass facade – sometimes translucent, sometimes opaque – transmits expressive qualities depending on its use.
The apparent austerity of the ensemble stands in sharp contrast to the expressiveness of the main hall, which is conceived as a piece of gold craftsmanship, in line with the classical tradition of Central European concert hall design. The décor – both ornamental and functional – has been executed along the lines of traditional local craftsmanship, based on a goldleaf coated component. For acoustic reasons, this element’s degree of fragmentation follows a geometrical sequence which increases in relation to its distance from the stage.
As with previous projects, Szczecin is designed with a certain degree of formal autonomy, trying to construct a building that is a specific part of its context yet simultaneously independent of it.
