SARAJEVO CONCERT HALL

INTERNATIONAL DESIGN COMPETITION

 

While processing of the design of the building, we faced two main problems: the structure - as a concert hall - had to work, fulfilling all the acoustic requirements, and the architectural language had to be understandable and acceptable by the multicultural and multiethnic context. We believe that the main feature of a concert hall should be to allow the perfect sound perception, for both the performers and the audience. The announcement specifically underlines that each concert-hall should be designed for more than a single kind of music (symphony, symphonic-coral for the great hall; chamber music, contemporary and popular music, auditions and meetings for the smaller hall). This led us to think that the best solution would have been to design a hall that could flexibly "adapt" its acoustic behaviour according to the performance or event represented. Therefore we solved the problem by thinking of a "movable" structure that could be "tuned" - similarly to an instrument - on the required acoustic level, obtaining from its shape the optimal sound as needed.This could be easily done: the reverberation time - which depending on the kind of concert that takes place in the hall must have a flexible value - became the ruling parameter of the shape of the hall, and particularly of the roof and ceiling.We think that architecture of public space should allow people to both recognise their own culture and create a future common cultural pattern. Designing an architecture in the Bosnian multicultural context obliges to the most careful analysis:

 

Sarajevo has been a dramatic metaphor of the multidimensional crisis which affects our global society; although cities exist to satisfy the human and social needs of the whole urban community, today they are places where mainly individual and private needs are satisfied. Our Urban space is fragmented and contains segregated and self-segregated communities: contemporary cities are socially divisive mainly because the aimed "individual" freedom has reduced our interdependence and therefore our capacity to define a common interest. The dichotomy between urbanity and public space is one of the main reasons of the present un-sustainability: urbanity cannot be limited to private spaces because a key issue of social sustainability is avoiding social exclusion. We urgently need to define new common interests and express them with values, rules, and spaces: to avoid worsening the life of our future generations we must act for sustainable development: this implies a change in both planning our cities and designing their architectures. Public spaces, as a part of the "built environment", can play an important role in creating social sustainability. Any public space, as a metaphor of the entire built environment, can be a place where people define their life in common. Architecture can contribute to it, but this is a difficult task: working and researching we became aware that the mere design of a public space with a supposed socialising function does not necessarily imply a real multi-social use of this space, nor does it stop social fragmentation.