Elegance without Pomp – The Elbphilharmonie

The opening concert on 10 January 2017 marked the start of the first season of one of the greatest and, at the same time, most controversial concert halls ever built. From the moment the first design was presented (2003), it became Hamburg’s newest landmark. Not only its symbolic character is reminiscent of the Opera in Sydney (1973). Both ventures were plagued by glaring cost overruns and a delay of several years – calling the projects’ feasibility into question. Instead of €272 million (the budget approved in 2007), the City of Hamburg had to come up with €789 million, and delays pushed the opening back 5 years. Nonetheless, there is no point in comparing the two iconic buildings architecturally. In Sydney, the two large spaces within the building are legible structurally, while in Hamburg, three concert halls, a hotel, and 45 apartments are contained within a unified glazed volume that hovers like an iceberg above a brick structure that was once a cocoa warehouse. Between the two, at 37 m above grade, lies the publicly accessible plaza, which serves as circulation hub and “city balcony”, with breath-taking views all around. The facades, whose appearance changes with the weather and type of light, have had a commanding presence in the city for years. Now the moment of truth has arrived, and it turns out that the interiors are not nearly as glamorous as many of the critics expected. The result: a democratic building – for all citizens. Elegant, yet without sleight of hand or pomp – in keeping with the Hanseatic culture of mercantilism. And, as stipulated in the 2013 agreement between the architects and the general contractor that restructured the project after the construction freeze, the level of detailing is indeed very high. The entrance at the edge of the dark multimedia wall on the ground floor seems unspectacular until the bright tube holding the world’s longest curved escalator, at 82 m length, appears and makes the visitors decelerate, in a manner of speaking. It takes a full two minutes until the first daylight reflections emitted from the glass sequins at its end begin to shimmer through, and another seemingly endless minute until visitors stand right in front of the storey-high pane of glass that offers a first spectacular view down the Elbe. The visitor is still within the warehouse and must turn 180° and take another, albeit shorter, escalator before rising high enough to experience the widening of the brick stair, and, with it, the horizon. Now the curved underside of the concert hall comes into view; the undulations of the ceiling pull the visitor, who is now on the plaza 37 metres above street level,

1HaupteingangMain entrance

2RolltreppenEscalators

3ParkenParking

4KaistudiosQuay studios

5KonferenzbereichConference area

6RestaurantRestaurant

7AussichtsfensterPanorama window

8PlazaPlaza

9Void PlazaVoid above plaza

10Kleiner SaalSmall concert hall

11FoyerFoyer

12Großer SaalLarge concert hall

13HotelHotel

14Luftraum HotelVoid above hotel

15ApartmentsApartments

16Luftraum ApartmentsVoid above apartments

17TechnikBuilding services

Schemata der parametrischen Programmierung der Fassade, farblich codiert: rot: Elementstoß; cyan: Wohnungstrennwand; grün: Raumtrennwand; gelb: Stütze; magenta: Loggia; blau: öffenbares Fenster / Diagrams of parametric programming of facade by means of colour coding: red: junction between elements; cyan: party wall; green: space-dividing wall; yellow: column; magenta: loggia; blue: openable window