From Little Things, Big Things Grow: The Vision to Build a Cultural Centre

‘Where did those words come from?’ Ulrike Klein asks herself; ruminating on the pivotal moment she made a commitment to build a Cultural Centre. ‘The vision was there, but I could not yet see how to bring it into realisation.’

It was not the first time she had trusted intuition. Twenty-five years earlier, she had boxed up her entire life, relocating from Germany to Australia on the promise of unpolluted land and the right climate. Through consistent hard work and perseverance, she turned a vision into a reality, co-creating Australia’s most internationally acclaimed skincare label. It was intuition, too, that led her to embark on a project to acquire a matched set of Guadagnini instruments for the Australian String Quartet. She put up fifty per cent of the price herself, trusting that a community of Australian music lovers would contribute the rest. As one scans over an abbreviated history of her life, shrewd, clairvoyant intuition appears at all the crucial junctures.

There was, of course, a more practical reason why building a new Cultural Centre was a good idea. The makeshift concert room and the old mud-brick building adjacent to it were becoming increasingly cramped and restrictive for the growing audience. The toilet facilities needed an upgrade, and even the heating was becoming temperamental: bowls of hot water were gracefully hauled into the green room to placate the shivering pianists, who would give their hands a pre-concert soak à la Glenn Gould. When the walkway between the concert room and afternoon tea facility began to groan and sigh ominously in the wind, Ulrike feared it might collapse. Something had to be done.

The recommendation to engage an architect had primarily come from carpenter Andy Skewes, but gardener and environmental sculptor Evette Sunset had also spoken to Ulrike about her collaborations with Anton Johnson, an Adelaide-based architect who had spent many years working in South Africa.

‘It’s usually the case that when a client rings you up, they need to have heard your name from a number of different sources,’ Anton says. ‘When it starts cropping up two or three times, they start to think that maybe there’s something to it. So I got the call. Ulrike simply asked me to come and have a look and see what the potential was to improve the facilities.’

Although Anton and Ulrike both had children who went through the Mount Barker Waldorf School, they had never actually met, and Anton had never seen the existing concert room. ‘The very next week I came to a concert, and queued up to go inside the old building,’ Anton tells me. ‘It had a flat floor, and a ceiling no higher than a standard classroom. They’d made some improvements by putting a little bay window in at the end of it, where a small ensemble would play. At interval time we would use the covered walkway to get to the mud-brick building to have wine, cheese, tea and coffee. There was a Sunday afternoon concert once a month, starting in February and ending in November, so there were only ten concerts a year, and that was it. It was delightful in its understated presence, but Ulrike was keen to see if there was anything we could do to that existing building to increase the capacity, improve the toilet facilities, and so on.’

‘We looked at how effectively we could recycle the existing mud-brick building, because it did have connections to the land, and to the history of the place,’ Anton continues. ‘But it was clear from the outset that there was just really no point trying to renovate. We could get a few more seats in, but it was nowhere near appropriate. So Ulrike made the decision to explore a broader vision, and as the potential for the site grew, so did her courage. That’s when we started in earnest to look at designs for a new concert hall facility. That opened up everything, and so at the end of that exercise I presented a broad-brush concept for the site, which at this stage still included the mud-brick building, and Evette Sunset’s concepts of developing the garden. At that point Ulrike had to do some big thinking, and things went quiet for about nine months.’

Before making the final decision to go with Anton, Ulrike’s children encouraged her to consider at least two alternative options. But consultations with several other architects only strengthened her resolve to trust her original intuition. ‘I think Anton’s main strength is that he listens to his clients,’ she says. ‘The way he translated my vision into a design made me very confident that he was the one.’

Maintaining the existing atmosphere of intimacy, and preserving the almost tactile sense of connection between the artists and the audience, was paramount. ‘Often when I’m in the Adelaide Town Hall I have the pleasure of sitting upstairs, but you’re so distanced from the experience,’ Ulrike says. ‘Of course within yourself you can bridge that, but it’s not always easy. So that was one of the most important things: it had to be a chamber.’

‘Ulrike put the numbers at 150 – she was adamant about that,’ Anton recalls. ‘Chamber music comes from an age where the aristocracy had these vast homes and palaces. They would commission music for a small ensemble, and they would play in these chambers. The music was actually composed to match the space. Now we’ve got the music, but we have to “compose” the space to match the music!’ The capacity thus non-negotiable, the next thing was to come up with an overall shape for the design. The conventional shoebox paradigm – adopted all around the globe for its tried-and-true acoustic supremacy – simply didn’t appeal. ‘I love spaces that aren’t square,’ Ulrike explains. ‘If you’re in a square space, you think square!’

‘I couldn’t have agreed with her more at the time,’ Anton says. ‘A shoebox has that natural requirement to be linear, so you automatically get that separation from the musicians and the audience. The more we could look at an embracing and enveloping shape, the better.’

The first challenge was finding a shape that maximised that sense of intimacy without compromising the acoustic potential of the venue. ‘In terms of geometry, the circle is the most efficient way of enveloping a space within a limited perimeter,’ Anton explains. ‘The hexagon is your next most efficient, then your octagonal, and then you start getting into your rhomboid shapes, squares and rectangles, and so forth. But each time, the perimeter gets longer compared to the volume you have, so by naturally keeping as close as possible to a circle, you’re going to get that sense of closeness amongst the audience and musicians.’ ‘There’s an incredible harmony and simplicity about the hexagon: it’s composed of equilateral triangles, so every side is the same length, and the radius – or distance to the centre – is the same. Every angle is equal. It’s also a very powerful shape in nature. I found out later that both Ulrike and I used to be beekeepers, and bees are a miracle of nature! The foundational shape of honeycomb is a hexagon. So it soon became apparent that the basic hexagonal shape would accommodate what we needed, and it would also have this connection to nature as well.’

Indeed, the desire to embrace the site, engage with the landscape and commune with the natural world was given equal priority to the music itself. ‘There’s no doubt that you start with function as the primary driver,’ Anton says. ‘“Form follows function” is the architect’s mantra. But aesthetics are always there, like a sunny misty morning, enveloping your design process. By aesthetics I don’t mean how “pretty” something is going to look, I mean the full gamut of sensory engagement, which is so sorely lacking today.’

‘Listening to music is a sensory experience, and you’re not just using your ears. Being in a space that is beautifully crafted with care is going to

affect your mood. If you’re listening to a piece of music and you’re freezing cold, it’s going to affect how much you’re going to enjoy the music. If you can sit in a space that makes you feel exhilarated and uplifted before the music starts, you’re already winning! You could walk into a dungeon that is perfectly acoustically designed, but you’re not going to enjoy it as much. If you heard that same piece played here at UKARIA, it’d be chalk and cheese.’

‘So I always strive to produce something that’s going to be appropriate within its aesthetic context,’ he continues. ‘In any design process, the site is the changing element. In this case, the site was out in the country – the landscape calls out to you. There’s beauty, nature and wildlife; there’s Indigenous culture and history, and so all of that set it apart from anything else! There was just no doubt that whatever we did here, it had to embrace the landscape, and bring the landscape in for the audience. The musicians needed to be essentially playing in nature.’

One idea explored in the initial sketch was an outdoor amphitheatre. Although it was promptly discarded when the design for the concert hall began to materialise, it remains in the original concept as a powerful symbol of how important the connection to the landscape was in Ulrike’s mind.

A natural extension of the bay window that formerly surrounded the musicians in the old concert room was the concept of creating a wall behind the stage made entirely of glass. ‘I would have loved to have been able to open it all out, but it wouldn’t have worked with the acoustics – you can’t have birds flying in and out,’ Ulrike says. ‘So the glass wall was the answer in order to keep a barrier.’

The orientation of UKARIA, and its position within the overall site, was dictated by its relationship to the Mount Barker Summit. ‘Using aerial photography, I was able to plot sight lines, and that’s where I started,’ Anton recalls. ‘There are two sight lines that come from the Twin Peaks, and one from the Summit itself, so we had quite a specific area to work within. The point where those lines met was the spot we placed the concert hall!’ Venue flexibility was another key element in Ulrike’s brief for the design. The concert hall had to be readily adaptable to accommodate a variety of different functions, including celebrations and special events, meetings and cocktail parties, seminars and workshops. The concert hall seating would need to be retractable to accommodate these various functions. This added another layer of complexity to the design process, wherein all these incidental settings had to remain subordinate to the primary function: chamber music.

When I ask Anton if he had ever designed a concert hall before, he laughs (as if anticipating the question), and pulls out a plastic-sleeved portfolio. ‘You’ll get a surprise when you see this,’ he says, leafing through the folder until he finds a photo of a double-galleried auditorium seating up to 150. Some of the detailing in the pattern of the roof bears a striking similarity to what would eventually be adopted for UKARIA.

‘I don’t even know if Ulrike knows about this,’ he says. ‘In other words, the question of whether or not I’d done a concert hall previously didn’t actually come up in our discussions. But I didn’t see it as being a requirement – the fact that I had done one was just a coincidence. In my career I’ve done a hospital, a number of schools, medical practices, central city office buildings twelve to fifteen stories high, and even rugby stadia. And of course I’ve done houses and renovations and – ironically – yes, I had done this chamber music auditorium.’

After graduating from university, Anton spent eleven years working in South Africa. One of his first projects was a Cultural Centre for the Nassau High School in Cape Town. In addition to the roof, one of the key similarities of this building to UKARIA was its versatility. ‘It had to be developed for music, for drama, for lectures and seminars – for everything really – because it was a school. We did a library too, so it was a whole “cultural centre” in that sense.’

When I ask Ulrike if there was a European concert hall or festival that she wished to ‘recreate’ in Australia, she mentions several. ‘I had been to Wigmore Hall, which has a totally different feel, and the Konzerthaus in Vienna,’ she tells me. ‘I’d also heard about Schwartzenburg [where Schubertiade is held] and Lockenhaus. Without having been there, I thought: let’s create an Australian Lockenhaus, in our own way! Don’t ask me why, but that’s what I really wanted.’

Mary Vallentine – the then CEO of the Melbourne Recital Centre – suggested that Ulrike look into engaging an acoustician from ARUP (the company responsible for the world-class acoustics of the Elisabeth Murdoch Hall and Primrose Potter Salon at the Melbourne Recital Centre) in order to maximise the acoustic potential of the new building. ‘We were well advanced into the design at this stage – still at a conceptual stage, but the building had a shape and a form, and the potential was growing incrementally,’ Anton recalls. ‘The decision to engage an acoustical consultant was a huge step, because it really took it beyond its humble origins. It was something that Ulrike thought very carefully about, and was initially unsettled by it in the sense that it could open up all sorts of doors. But it was an important thing to do.’

‘We were very fortunate that Andrew Nicol [Head of Acoustics, ARUP] immediately saw that the project was suitable for one of his staff, Cameron Hough, who was fantastic – he was very open minded.’

Cameron was indeed the perfect choice: trained as a classical violinist (previously Concertmaster of the Brisbane Philharmonic Orchestra and first violinist of the Point String Quartet), his rigorous scientific training as an acoustician is balanced by a musician’s sense of artistry.

But there were significant challenges to overcome: Cameron was initially resistant to the near-circular geometry of Anton’s design. ‘Engineers like to work with things that are not too experimental,’ Anton explains. ‘They’ve got formula, and they’ve got software. But because Ulrike and I were both on the same wavelength regarding the shape, Cameron had to come on board with it. He applied the discipline of acoustics, but he was not allowed to change the aesthetics. And I think that challenge is why we got a good result: he and I both had to really work hard at it. I had to make the space accommodate his acoustic requirements, and at the same time, maintain our vision. And we got the two to work together – in fact, to compliment each other in perfect harmony.

The design became a deeply collaborative process between architect and engineer. ‘We’d do workshops together – I’d go down to Melbourne, or he’d come here, and we gradually developed the space,’ Anton explains. ‘It was a case of me advancing the design, starting to do construction details, and the final selection of materials like rammed earth, and then Cameron would run it through his system, and give me feedback.’

Cameron proposed some crucial revisions and adjustments: the overall height of the roof needed to be increased to gain a greater room volume and reverberance; and tone quality was rectified by adding sound scattering finishes and modifying the domed ceiling to reduce focusing. These suggestions – and the potential improvements that they could offer – were tested using Boundary Element Modelling (BEM) in ARUP’s SoundLab software, which could simulate the before-and-after sound of the room before it was even built.

‘Ulrike, Alison and I were all there, sitting in this black room, and they’d play us samples,’ Anton recalls. ‘This is what it sounds like in Wigmore Hall, and now this is what it sounds like at UKARIA with the roof where it is currently. And then they’d play the whole thing again with the heightened roof. It was a subtle thing, but there was consensus in the end that lifting the roof would add just that bit more. And it’s that little bit more that eventually made it spot on.’ ‘There are some things I just ponder and ponder,’ Ulrike says. ‘And then there are other things that either we do or we don’t. And for me there was no question at all. We just had to do it – the acoustics were paramount.’

After all the elements in the design were finalised, construction could finally begin. ‘The design and documentation must have taken about eighteen months,’ Anton recalls. ‘It was a delicate project to get through council because we were creating what people outside perceived as a “high-impact” facility. So we consulted with everyone and were successful in getting it approved. We built through that first winter [2014], and then round to the following August.’

Harrold & Kite Pty Ltd were engaged as the building contractor, along with CPR Consulting Engineers (structural and civil engineers), Bestec Consulting Engineers (building services), and Rider Levett Bucknall (cost management). Overall, construction progressed smoothly. On 14 November 2014, the Klein Family laid a foundation stone of rammed earth in the outer wall of the foyer, and a celebration was held when the last beam of the ceiling was in place, following the German ‘Richtfest’ tradition. ‘We had a flower wreath which we put up in the roof, and everyone came together,’ Ulrike recalls. ‘That was absolutely beautiful, because my grandchildren were there.’

While the Cultural Centre was being built, the existing concert series had been transferred to an alternative venue – the Living Arts Centre at the Mount Barker Waldorf School. Word had begun to spread that a new concert hall was being built, which in turn increased the demand for tickets to the concert series. ‘The Living Arts Centre can seat around 220,’ Anton recalls, ‘and all of a sudden – just like that – the concerts were being booked out! Ulrike came back to me and asked: how can we go from having 220 seats at the Living Arts Centre, and then have this grand opening next year at UKARIA with only 150 seats? By this stage, the structure was up, the roof was on, and we were starting to build the external walls. The design was complete! Documented. Tendered. We had a builder on site who was going frantic to maintain his program, so you can imagine the surprise when at a site meeting we told him we were going to add another 80 seats into the building!’

Photo: Mandy Foot

Fortunately, there was a way to increase the capacity: the space for a visual art display in the upper gallery – an important part of the original design – had to be sacrificed. ‘This area was almost like a second foyer in the original plan,’ Anton explains. ‘It was a flat-floored area, and the idea was that there would be art on display. The audience could mingle up there and look at the art, and then head down into the seats for the concert. That’s how we documented it in the original concept.’

‘It was a heart-stopping moment, because it was not expected, but we were able to accommodate it,’ Anton recalls. ‘I set to work with Craig Otto from Acromat [who had designed the retractable seating] and I was able to modify the back of the auditorium to widen it a bit more, but still working within the confines of the footprint already built. I did a quick redraw of the back section before they started building the inside walls. We expanded the space, and had enough depth in the original concept, so between us, we got the extra 80 seats in the art exhibition area.’

‘There was never a conflict,’ Anton says, reflecting on the entire process. ‘In fact the conflicts are challenges, and those challenges tend to bring out an even better design. And that’s important, because if things are too easy, you quickly slip into laziness, and out of laziness comes something that is mediocre.’

‘Our then Chair, David Minns, made sure we stayed within the budget,’ Ulrike recalls. ‘I never had sleepless nights thinking, “Oh my God, how do we do that?” That planning was really solid. There was skilled craftsmanship behind it all. And the site meetings had a really great atmosphere: whenever I came, I could see the tradies just loved being there, seeing this woman doing something so crazy!’

By August 2015, construction was complete, and everything was ready for the grand opening concert. A vision had become a reality.

A TOUR THROUGH THE AUDITORIUM