Irrational theatre - Philharmonie in Berlin, Germany

Architectural Review, The, Feb, 1995 by Peter Blundell Jones

The foyer sequence of the small hall is equally assured: here again it is the pair of prominent main stairs which catches the rearward movement of the crowd and redirects it into the back of the auditorium. The spaces are complex and irregular, yet the routes are clear and inviting. A sense of visual connections and hierarchies persists, but the Neo-Classical axis as route and centre of symmetry has disappeared. The logic lies in the flow and the experience of route, not in the imposing of measure on the earth (the original meaning of geometry), nor in the discipline of structure and construction. It is the complete opposite of London's Barbican, where the systematic logic of the plan is unreadable in experience of the spaces, robbing one of all sense of direction.

Realisation

Unbuilt, the qualities of Mannheim might all be speculation, but we have a concert-hall version in the Philharmonie, designed in 1956 and completed in 1963. Its 'vineyard terraces' with their varied angles, perhaps the most important single innovation, are directly carried over from Mannheim. The foyer too follows and develops the principles of Mannheim with great success. Admired world-wide, the hall provides a new kind of concert experience for the late twentieth century, and has been widely imitated. It would not have succeeded if it did not somehow meet the unconscious needs and expectations of its users, if they were not 'affected' emotionally when coming together to make and experience music, as Aschenbrenner's paper cited above predicts. Here is clear evidence that architecture does influence the way we think and act, not in the mechanistic or deterministic way sometimes claimed, but in the way it suggests, cajoles, reinforces, substantiates. Architecture cannot work without the complicity of users, and it has to form a relationship with them, to persuade, to support and encourage, not to control and enforce. There needs to be a dialogue between architecture and life, and the magic of the Philharmonie shows that Scharoun had achieved it.

Acknowledgements

The drawings are reproduced by courtesy of the Scharoun Archive, Akademie der Kunste, and were supplied by Achim Wendschuh with copies of documentation. Other information and documents were supplied by Margot Aschenbrenner and Alfred Schinz. Sketch models were built by the Fifth Year at the School of Architectural Studies, Sheffield University, under the instruction of Peter Blundell Jones and Prue Chiles. The final ones were built by Richard Bradbury, Jonathan Brent, Maurice Friel, Andy Groarke, Mark Hancock, Chris Milan, Graham Ovenden, Guy Smith and Jo Witchell. They were photographed by Peter Lathey.

The models will be shown at a major Scharoun exhibition curated by Peter Blundell Jones which opens at the RIBA, London on 7 February.

1 It was an invited competition, with 10 firms including those of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Richard Docker. In September 1953, Mies and two others were invited to develop their ideas further, but the commission was eventually given to Gerhard Weber, whose theatre now stands on Goetheplatz. The Scharoun and the Mies, polar opposites, were widely considered the two important schemes.