038 REPORT
New World Center, Miami Beach. Image © Rui Dias-Aidos
Birmingham, Leeds, and Belfast were intended, in part, for musical performances. By 1890, larger purpose-built halls were construed in Vienna, Leipzig, Prague, Copenhagen, and St. Petersburg. By the First World War a clearly identifiable, international building type had been established: the concert hall. The traditional concert hall endures as a powerful symbol of culture. Following the Second World War, cities that sought to make broad statements about the place of culture in society selected designs strongly influenced by the 19th century shoe- box form. The Royal Festival Hall, completed in 1951 used the shoebox form in a Modernist context, a trend that would continue into the early 1970s in New York, Washington, DC, and Minneapolis.
A competing trend throughout the middle part of the 20th century was the single- level fan-shaped concert hall. Tiered rooms conjured social strata, while fan-shaped rooms where patrons were literally all on the same level reinforced the concert expe- rience as a symbol of an egalitarian society. The fan-shaped hall boasted democratic sightlines and proximity to the performance. The concert hall had become a vehicle for not only civic pride, but also social commentary.
By the early 1960s, Berlin had already endured a decade of division. In contrast to both the shoebox and the fan-shaped hall, a West German concert hall was de- signed to mitigate the divide between performer and audience, creating a completely communal experience: the first surround concert hall. In 1960, when construc- tion began on the Berlin Philharmonie, the physical division of the city had not yet begun, but by the time the hall opened in 1963 the Berlin Wall was less than 500
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metres away. The hall is esteemed for its bold architectural and political statement, as well as for its fine orchestral acoustics.
As in Berlin, the forms of new concert halls continue to make statements about so- ciety. In a world that is steeped in popular and commercial culture and with constant availability of digital media, the classical music industry has been forced to react. One of these reactions is to embrace contemporary music culture and to blur the lines between the classical music concert-going experience and other live perfor- mance. The recently completed hall for the New World Symphony in Miami Beach adheres to this approach. The hall integrates surfaces for video projection into the architecture and provides capability for performance lighting similar to a popular music concert. Seating wraps around the rear of the performance platform. The modest 756-seat hall allows visual and acoustic intimacy with the performers and other audience members.
The contrasting reaction is to conjure the traditional associations that we all have with classical music and concert-going. The choice of a shoebox form for a contem- porary hall is a statement to substantiate classical concert music in our society. The Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville was created with the specific intent of differentiating the orchestral concert experience from the typical popular and commercial music experience. The designers of the Nashville hall cite the Vienna Musikeverein as a primary influence. The new concert hall in Montreal that will open in September 2011, as well as the upcoming hall in Las Vegas, will also take the traditional shoebox form.
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