Hamburg (Germany)
Elbphilharmonie Hamburg
Between Hanseatic Hub and HafenCity
The Elbphilharmonie on the Kaispeicher marks a location that most people in Hamburg know about but have never really noticed. It is now set to become a new centre of social, cultural and daily life for the people of Hamburg and for visitors from all over the world.
Too often a new cultural centre appears to cater to the privileged few. In order to make the new Philharmonic a genuinely public attraction, it is imperative to provide not only attractive architecture but also an attractive mix of urban uses. The building complex accommodates a philharmonic hall, a chamber music hall, restaurants, bars, a panorama terrace with views of Hamburg and the harbour, apartments, a hotel and parking facilities. These varied uses are combined in one building as they are in a city. And like a city, the two contradictory and superimposed architectures of the Kaispeicher and the Philharmonic ensure exciting, varied spatial sequences: on the one hand, the original and archaic feel of the Kaispeicher marked by its relationship to the harbour; on the other, the sumptuous, elegant world of the Philharmonic. In between, there is an expansive topography of public and private spaces, all differing in character and scale: the large terrace of the Kaispeicher, extending like a new public plaza, responds to the inwardly oriented world of the Philharmonic built above it.
The heart of the complex is the Elbphilharmonie itself. A space has emerged that foregrounds music listeners and music makers to such an extent that, together, they actually represent the architecture. The philharmonic building typology has undergone architectural reformulation that is exceptionally radical in its unprecedented emphasis on the proximity between artist and audience – almost like a football stadium.
Urban Architecture for Lovers of Culture
The new philharmonic is not just a site for music; it is a full-fledged residential and cultural complex. The concert hall, seating 2100, and the chamber music hall for 550 listeners are embedded in between luxury flats and a five-star hotel with built-in services such as restaurants, a health and fitness centre, conference facilities. Long a mute monument of the post-war era that occasionally hosted fringe events, the Kaispeicher A has now been transformed into a vibrant, international centre for music lovers, a magnet for both tourists and the business world. The Elbphilharmonie will become a landmark of the city of Hamburg and a beacon for all of Germany. It will vitalize the neighbourhood of the burgeoning HafenCity, ensuring that it is not merely a satellite of the venerable Hanseatic city but a new urban district in its own right.
The Archaic Kaispeicher
The Kaispeicher A, designed by Werner Kallmorgen, was constructed between 1963 and 1966 and used as a warehouse until close to the end of the last century. Originally built to bear the weight of thousands of heavy bags of cocoa beans, it now lends its solid construction to supporting the new Philharmonic. The structural potential and strength of the old building has been enlisted to bear the weight of the new mass resting on top of it.
Our interest in the warehouse lies not only in its unexploited structural potential but also in its architecture. The robust, almost aloof building provides a surprisingly ideal foundation for the new philharmonic hall. It seems to be part of the landscape and is not yet really part of the city, which has now finally pushed forward to this location. The harbour warehouses of the 19th century were designed to echo the vocabulary of the city’s historical façades: their windows, foundations, gables and various decorative elements are all in keeping with the architectural style of the time. Seen from the River Elbe, they were meant to blend in with the city’s skyline despite the fact that they were uninhabited storehouses that neither required nor invited the presence of light, air and sun.
But not the Kaispeicher A: it is a heavy, massive brick building like many other warehouses in the Hamburg harbour, but its archaic façades are abstract and aloof. The building’s regular grid of holes measuring 50 x 75 cm cannot be called windows; they are more structure than opening.
The New Glass Building
The new building has been extruded from the shape of the Kaispeicher; it is identical in ground plan with the brick block of the older building, above which it rises. However, at the top and bottom, the new structure takes a different tack from the quiet, plain shape of the warehouse below: the undulating sweep of the roof rises from the lower eastern end to its full height of 108 metres at the Kaispitze (the tip of the peninsula). The Elbphilharmonie is a landmark visible from afar, lending an entirely new vertical accent to the horizontal layout that characterises the city of Hamburg. There is a greater sense of space here in this new urban location, generated by the expanse of the water and the industrial scale of the seagoing vessels.
The glass façade, consisting in part of curved panels, some of them carved open, transforms the new building, perched on top of the old one, into a gigantic, iridescent crystal, whose appearance keeps changing as it catches the reflections of the sky, the water and the city.
The bottom of the superstructure also has an expressive dynamic. Along its edges, the sky can be seen from the Plaza through vault-shaped openings, creating spectacular, theatrical views of both the River Elbe and downtown Hamburg. Further inside, deep vertical openings provide ever-changing visual relations between the Plaza and the foyers on different levels.
Entrance and Plaza
The main entrance to the Kaispeicher complex lies to the east. An exceptionally long escalator leads up to the Plaza; it describes a slight curve so that it cannot be seen in full from one end to the other. It is a spatial experience in itself; it cuts straight through the entire Kaispeicher, passing a large panorama window with a balcony that affords a view of the harbour before continuing on up to the Plaza. The latter, sitting on top of the Kaispeicher and under the new building, is like a gigantic hinge between old and new. It is a new public space that offers a unique panorama. Restaurants, bars, ticket office and hotel lobby are located here, as well as access to the foyers of the new philharmonic.
The Elbphilharmonie
What kind of a space will the philharmonic be? What acoustic and architectural concerns have gone into its construction? What tradition resonates in this hall in comparison to other new locations, say, in Tokyo and Los Angeles or the ur-model in Berlin. It soon became clear that the Hamburg Philharmonic would be different from that ur-model, the Scharoun Philharmonic. The premises alone – the radical givens of the location, namely the harbour and the existing warehouse – invite change. This is a project of the 21st century that would have been inconceivable before. What has been retained is the fundamental idea of the Philharmonic as a space where orchestra and conductor are located in the midst of the audience, as it were: here the architecture and the arrangement of the tiers take their cue from the logic of the acoustic and visual perception of music, performers and audience. But that logic leads to another conclusion. The tiers are more pervasive; tiers, walls and ceiling form a spatial unity. The people, that is the combination of audience and musicians, determine the space; the space seems to consist only of people. In this respect, it resembles the typology of the football stadium that we have developed in recent years, with the goal of allowing an almost interactive proximity between audience and players. We also studied archaic forms of theatre, like Shakespeare’s Globe, with a view to exploiting the vertical dimension. The complex geometry of the hall unites organic flow with incisive, near static shape. Walking, standing, sitting, seeing, being seen, listening… all the activities and needs of people in a concert hall are explicitly expressed in the architecture of the space. This space, rising vertically almost like a tent, offers room for 2100 people to congregate for the enjoyment of making and listening to music. The towering shape of the hall defines the static structure of the entire volume of the building and is correspondingly echoed in the silhouette of the building as a whole.
Herzog & de Meuron, 2016
Located in the middle of Hamburg’s HafenCity, the Elbphilharmonie marks a location that was known to the public but not really accessible, and that will now become a center of social, cultural and daily life both for locals and visitors. The site is a small triangular peninsula where the old Kaispeicher A sits – a former warehouse which was still in use until the end of the last century. Now, this solid and weighty construction supports the Elbphilharmonie. Its robust brick facades turn the massive warehouse into a radical and abstract construction which provides a surprisingly ideal foundation for the new Philharmonic hall.
The new building has been extruded from the shape of the Kaispeicher. While rising above the brick block with an identical ground plan, the top and bottom of the new structure are fundamentally different from the calm form of the warehouse below: the broad, undulating shape of the roof rises up to 110 meters at the tip of the peninsula. The bottom of the new structure is an animated plaza, divided into zones defined by expansive vaulting, ranging from flat to very steep. An arch cut into the side wall shows the sky and affords theatrical views over downtown Hamburg. Deep recesses cut into the building above the plaza provide views of the foyers on several levels. Clad in variously curved and cut panels of glass, this volume stands in contrast to the stoic brick facade below.
The main entrance to the building lies to the east, leading to the upper plaza through a curving elongated escalator which transports users through the entire warehouse. This offers a spatial experience in itself that modernizes the spirit of the sweeping staircases in fin de siècle concert halls. Upon reaching the top, visitors step onto a the plaza high above the city, perched on top of the Kaispeicher and providing direct access to the foyer of the new concert hall.
The design of the Philharmonic is clearly a 21st century project that would have been inconceivable before. It retains the fundamental idea of the philharmonic hall, which locates the orchestra and conductor in the midst of the audience and with the architecture following the logic of acoustics and visual perception. Here, however, the tiers extend higher into the overall space so that they form a homogeneous whole together with the walls and the ceiling. Rising vertically almost like a tent, the concert hall can seat 2,100 people, and its towering shape defines the structure and the silhouette of the entire volume, creating a landmark visible from afar.
The Kaispecher A, designed by Werner Kallmorgen and constructed between 1963 and 1966, is a brick block displaying an extraordinary rigor and abstraction. The new Philharmonic, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, rises from this massive plinth located on a prominent corner of the renewed city harbor. It is a cultural center containing a concert hall, a chamber music hall, restaurants, bars, apartments, parking facilities, a hotel and a public panorama terrace. This typology has been devised to provide not only attractive architecture, but also one able to accommodate an appealing combination of urban programs.
Volumetrically, the new building has been extruded from the shape of the Kaispecher; however, the top and bottom of the new structure are entirely different from the plain shape of the construction below. The undulating sweep of the roof rises to a total height of 108 meters at the tip of the peninsula, sloping down some 20 meters to the eastern end. In this way, the Elbphilharmonie will become a landmark visible from afar, lending a vertical accent to the horizontal image of Hamburg. The glass facade, consisting in part of curved panels, some of them cut open, transforms the structure into a gigantic iridescent crystal whose appearance changes with the reflections of the sky, the water and the city.
The underside of the Philharmonic also has an expressive dynamic. Along its edges, large vault-shaped openings give the plaza over the Kaispecher A spectacular views of the Elb River and the city. This area, with deep vertical openings that provide visual connections with the lobbies of the different floors above, can be reached via an escalator. The plaza houses the public program of restaurants, bars, ticket sales, and hotel lobby, as well as the access to the foyer of the new concert hall.
With room for 2,200 people, the concert hall is a strictly contemporary design that, like Scharoun’s Berlin Philharmonic, places the orchestra and conductor in the midst of the space. Here, however, it’s the users – aside from acoustic and visibility concerns – that define a space in which tiers, walls and ceilings form a unitary whole. The objective is, as in the recent stadiums designed by the Swiss architects, to bring audience and musicians closer. The vertical shape of the hall determines the structure of the whole building, and is correspondingly reflected in its exterior volume.
The Elbphilharmonie on the Kaispeicher will soon take its place among the landmarks of the city. Its two contradictory and superposed architectures will ensure exciting vistas for the public. On the one hand, the nostalgic feel of the original architecture; on the other, the sumptuous, elegant, musical world of the concert hall. And in between, a wide varierty of public and private spaces, all differing in character and scale: the Plaza, oriented towards landscape, the major concert hall seating 2200 and a multipurpose hall for 550 listeners, will be complemented by a 5-star hotel with 220 rooms, restaurants, a health and fitness center and conference facilities, as well as some 35 luxury flats.
The Kaispeicher A, constructed between 1963 and 1966, was used as a warehouse for cocoa. It will now lend its solid construction as a base for the new Philharmonic, which will be shaped like a distorted cube that tapers towards the west. The new building has been conceived as an extrusion of the warehouse, an iridescent, multifaceted crystal, placed on top of the brick Kaispeicher. The broad, undulating sweep of the roof rises to a total height of 100 m at the tip of the peninsula, sloping down to the eastern end, where the roof is 20 m lower. Water and city will be reflected in the glass facade, producing optical illusions.
The main entrance to the Kaispeicher complex lies to the east. A long escalator will run diagonally across the entire warehouse taking visitors from the quay up to the Plaza. Situated on top of the Kaispeicher and under the new building, the Plaza will function as a joint between old and new, forming a spacious public area with a unique panorama. In certain places, the terrace of the Plaza that runs around the building will widen into larger outdoor areas whose height and cupola-shaped cut-outs will further heighten the drama of the view.
The lobby will be the overture or the echo of the large concert hall. Mounted under the belly of the great hall, a landscape of stairs – an Escherlike sculpture – climbs in all directions.
In the grand hall, the warm white of the foyer gives way to an intense amber; the surfaces shimmer and sparkle, reflecting the light. The orchestra and the conductor are placed in the midst of the audience; the galleries sweep into each other, forming a steep amphitheatre. The architecture disappears in a sea of faces; it seems to consist only of listeners whose intense concentration on the music becomes palpable.
Iwan Baan
The Elbphilharmonie on the Kaispeicher in the midst of Hamburg’s HafenCity marks a location that was known to the public but not really accessible. In the future it will become a new center of social, cultural and daily life not only for the people of Hamburg but for visitors from all over the world.
The Kaispeicher A was still in use as a warehouse until the end of the last century. This solid and weighty construction will now be put to new use: it will support the Philharmonic. It will now bear on top the load that it once carried within its walls.
Iwan Baan
Our interest in the warehouse lies not only in its unexploited structural potential but also in its architecture. The robust, almost aloof architecture of the Kaispeicher provides a surprisingly ideal foundation for the new Philharmonic hall. It seems to be part of the landscape and not yet really part of the city, which is now spreading out to include the area. The harbor warehouses of the 19th century adopted the urban vocabulary of the city’s historical façades — but not the Kaispeicher A. Despite the contextual choice of bricks as a building material, the façades of this massive and mighty warehouse are strikingly radical and abstract.
Iwan Baan
The new building has been extruded from the shape of the Kaispeicher. While rising above the brick block of the older building with an identical ground plan, the top and bottom of the new structure are fundamentally different from the calm and simple form of the warehouse below: the broad, undulating shape of the roof rises to a total height of 110 m at the Kaispitze (the tip of the peninsula), sloping down to the eastern end, where the roof is 30 m lower. The bottom of the new structure, on top of the warehouse, is a lively animated plaza, divided into zones defined by expansive vaulting, ranging from flat to very steep. An arch cut into the side wall affords views of the sky and spectacular, theatrical vistas across the river Elbe river and downtown Hamburg. Deep recesses cut into the building above the plaza provide views of the foyers on several levels.
Iwan Baan
In contrast to the stoic brick façade of the Kaispeicher, the Philharmonic, clad in variously curved and cut panels of glass, looks like an immense crystal, whose appearance keeps changing as it captures and combines reflections from the sky, the water and the city.
The main entrance to the Kaispeicher lies to the east. Curving slightly as it leads to the plaza, the elongated escalator that provides access cannot be seen in full from one end to the other. It is a spatial experience in itself, transporting users through the entire warehouse, passing a large panorama window and translating the spirit of the sweeping staircases in fin de siècle concert halls into a contemporary idiom.
mi chenxing
Upon reaching the top of the Kaispeicher, visitors step onto a spacious terrace, a new plaza high above the city. Perched on top of the Kaispeicher, it is like a gigantic joint between the two elements of the structure and creates a new space for public use that also provides access to the foyer of the new concert hall.
The design of the Philharmonic is clearly a 21st century project that would have been inconceivable before. What has been retained is the fundamental idea of the Philharmonic as a space where orchestra and conductor are located in the midst of the audience and where the architecture and the arrangement of the tiers take their cue from the logic of the acoustic and visual perception of music, performers and audience.
Oliver Heissner
Here, however, that logic leads to another conclusion; the tiers extend higher into the overall space so that the tiers, walls, and ceiling form a homogeneous whole. The complex geometry of the hall unites organic flow with incisive, more static shapes. Rising vertically almost like a tent, the concert hall seats 2150 people to enjoy the pleasures of making and listening to music. Its towering shape defines the structure of the entire volume of the building and is correspondingly reflected in the silhouette of the building as a whole.
As a landmark visible from afar, the Elbphilharmonie will lend the horizontally oriented city an entirely new accent, symbolizing Hamburg’s foray into the new territory of the harbor area along the shores of the Elbe.
Herzog & de Meuron
Iwan Baan
Iwan Baan
Iwan Baan
Iwan Baan
Iwan Baan
Iwan Baan
Iwan Baan
Iwan Baan
Iwan Baan
Iwan Baan
Iwan Baan
Iwan Baan
Iwan Baan
Iwan Baan
Oliver Heissner
Oliver Heissner
Oliver Heissner
Iwan Baan
Iwan Baan
Oliver Heissner
Oliver Heissner
Oliver Heissner
Oliver Heissner
Oliver Heissner
mi chenxing
Oliver Heissner
Oliver Heissner
Oliver Heissner
Oliver Heissner
Oliver Heissner
Oliver Heissner
José Campos
José Campos
