Hamburg Counterpoint

Architectural Review, The, Nov, 2000 by Layla Dawson

Hamburg's new music school is a lively synthesis of form and materials designed to nurture emerging creativity.

'The existing trees on the site define the framework of the project.' So begins Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue's own description of their new Jugendmusikschule, in one of Hamburg's most luxurious and leafy inner-city neighbourhoods. In contrast to more spectacular projects completed before Miralles' death (AR August 2000), this is a small but fine example of their design methodology, the art of discovering the essence of a sense of place.

Miralles' early sketches for the competition, which his office won in 1997, played with the idea of a concert piano. The resulting elevations retain keyboard associations; blue, orange and yellow, vertical stripes on the white plastered walls and a flying auditorium wing with a composer's studio to one side forming the bulbous curve of a grand piano in plan. Landscape and building meld together. Tree crowns form roofs. Concrete and steel columns, coloured and asymmetrically placed, merge with existing trees to create a forest pattern of trunks. Movement, swaying branches and leaves, are seen against concrete, red-brown brickwork, glass, grey and coloured steel. This counterpoint rhythm, of natural and man-made elements, alludes to both classical and modern musical forms.

A free-standing curved concrete wall and mature chestnut trees acoustically and visually screen the school from a busy main road. Set behind this protection, the three-storey building is reached through a boomerang-shaped foyer of sloping steel and glazed walls. Musicians and visitors enter under a canopy supported on groups of splayed steel columns, through doors with windows set at a child's eye level. This is the pivotal point of the school. Areas open to the public, such as the Allegro cafe and lecture rooms, lead directly off the foyer, while the approach to the first floor auditorium -- a wide ramp-like staircase with deep treads -- also acts as a kind of proscenium for formal addresses at public performances.

Two floors of open galleries rise above the foyer, magically transforming the musicians carrying instruments between classes, into walk-on extras in a theatre production. Sound is well dampened and only the occasional flute, violin or oboe can be heard when a door is opened. From the galleries, corridors wander off into outstretched wings of various classrooms, administration and practice rooms, where the mood gradually becomes more introverted and concentrated.

No two spaces have the same dimensions and nothing is repetitive, except perhaps the door openings. Natural light, entering through both vertical wall, horizontal and angled roof decks, adds a further unpredictable factor, and the roof, as eccentric as the building plan, is a landscape of peaks and valleys. Externally, the curved perimeter of the first floor overhangs the ground floor, and coloured brick and plaster jostle each other to form a patchwork envelope. A steeply rising acute corner on the private side of the school, seen from the cafe's cobbled terrace, is a clear reference to Hamburg's brick Expressionist Chile Haus.

Teachers and students moved into their new premises in June of this year. Professional music tuition is part of the state school system and with an opera, various professional orchestras and choirs to run, Hamburg encourages local talent. What impact will this freely designed, colourful and generously articulated environment have on a new generation of musicians? Miralles and Tagliabue's own wish was that their building reflected, 'The energy and youth of children and music'. The result has turned out to be, not frozen, but living music.

Architect

Enric Miralles, Benedetta Tagliabue Arquitectes Associats, Barcelona

Project team

Karl Unglaub, Elena Rocchi, Torsten Skoecz, Nano Jacinto

Associate architect

NPS Parcner

Structural engineer

Windels, Timm, Morgan

Acoustic engineer

Wolfgang Jensen

Landscape architect

Ruppel & Ruppel, Hamburg

Facade consultant

IFFT, Institut fur Fassadentechnik

Photographs

Duccio Malagamba

1. Main entrance is sheltered by a skewed canopy. Scale is modest, humane and welcoming.

2. Vertical strips of bold colour seemingly applied at random enliven and animate the angular exterior.

3. Detail of entrance, a colourful collision of form and materials.

4. Circulation spine has a smaller composer's studio attached to it.

5. Volumes are articulated with an

7. Staircases jostle vertiginously in space. A broad, ramp-like stair leads up to the large auditorium on the first floor.

8. Light filters in to the spine through a big permeable wall, emphasizing the connection with the exterior.

9. The building is a compelling patchwork of materials.

1. main entrance

2. foyer

3. auditorium

4. spine

5. cafe

6. offices

7. ramp/stair

8. composer's studio

9. classrooms and music studios