Philharmonic Hall by Barozzi/Veiga

A translucent glass concert hall with a jagged roofline in Szczecin, Poland.

The building emerges from its urban context, influenced by the steeply pitched roofs and the verticality of the city’s residential buildings, by the monumentality of the upright ornaments of its neo-Gothic churches and the heavy volumes of its Classicist buildings, by the towers that dot its entire skyline and the cranes of its port.

With an expressionist mindset, we have aimed to use geometry to give shape to a new rhythmic composition that conveys feelings by balancing massiveness and verticality. The use of glass as the exterior cladding material highlights how the building contrasts with the conditions of its surrounding environment. It creates a bright, transparent and upstanding object.

 

The building’s interiors are simple, large skylights being their utmost defining trait. The great symphonic hall differs from these in that it is a sculpted object, embedded into a barely outlined mineral-like space.