Casa de Musica

REM KOOLHAAS
 Architects - OMA
 Location - Avenida da Boavista 604, 4050-104
Porto, Portugal
 Architect in Charge - Rem Koolhaas and Ellen van
Loon
 Project Architects - Adrianne Fisher, Michelle
Howard
 Area - 22000.0 sqm
 Project Year - 2005
 Rather than struggle with the inescapable acoustic
superiority of this traditional shape, the Casa da Musica
attempts to reinvigorate the traditional concert hall in
another way: by redefining the relationship between the
hallowed interior and the general public outside.
 The Casa da Musica, the new home of the National
Orchestra of Porto, stands on a new public square in the
historic Rotunda da Boavista.
 It has a distinctive faceted form, made of white concrete,
which remains solid and believable in an age of too many
icons.
 Inside, the elevated 1,300-seat (shoe box-shaped) Grand
Auditorium has corrugated glass facades at either end that
open the hall to the city and offer Porto itself as a dramatic
backdrop for performances.
Locating the Casa da Musica was key in the development of OMA's
thinking; they chose not to build the new concert hall in the ring of old
buildings defining the Rotunda but to create a solitary building standing on
a travertine-paved plateau in front of the Rotunda's park, neighbouring a
working class area.
With this concept, issues of symbolism, visibility, and access were resolved
in one gesture.
The Grand Auditorium, conceived as a simple mass hollowed
out end-to-end from the solid form of the building, the Casa da
Musica also contains a smaller, more flexible performance space
with no fixed seating, ten rehearsal rooms, recording studios, an
educational area, a restaurant, terrace, bars, a VIP room,
administration areas, and an underground car park for 600
vehicles.
Innovative use of materials and
colour throughout was another
imperative: as well as the unique
curtain-like glass walls at either end
of the Grand Auditorium, the walls
are clad in plywood with enlarged
wood patterns embossed in gold,
giving a dramatic jolt in perspective;
the VIP area has hand-painted tiles
picturing a traditional pastoral scene,
while the roof terrace is patterned
with geometric black and white tiles;
floors in public areas are sometimes
paved in aluminium.
The building provides a large amount of rehearsal rooms, soloist rooms
and dressing rooms to house the Porto Philharmonic Orchestra and to
provide in addition facilities to external and guest performers. During the
Design Phase OMA researched new materials and new applications of
existing and Portuguese materials exclusively for Casa da Musica such as;
the corrugated glass for the windows of the Auditoria, the used tiles for
different rooms and the chairs, canopy and wall finish in the Grand
Auditorium.
 Since this part of Porto was still a city “intact‟‟, OMA chose
not to articulate the new concert hall as a segment of a
small scale circular wall around the Rotunda da Boavista
but to create a solitary building standing on the new, more
intimate square connected to the historical park of the
Rotunda da Boavista and enclosed by three urban blocks.
With this concept, issues of symbolism, visibility and
access were resolved in one gesture.
 Through both continuity and contrast, the park on the
Rotunda da Boavista, after our intervention, is no longer a
mere hinge between the old and the new Porto, but it
becomes a positive encounter of two different models of
the city.
This century has seen an architecturally
frantic attempt to escape from the
tyranny of the notorious “shoe-box”
shaped concert hall. However, after
researching the acoustic quality of
existing concert halls we had to
conclude together with our acoustic
specialist that the best halls in the
world have a shoe box shape.
 Most cultural institutions serve only part of a population. A majority
knows their exterior shape, only a minority knows what happens
inside. OMA addressed the relationship between the Concert Hall and
the public inside as well as outside the building by considering the
building as a solid mass from which were eliminated the two shoe-box-
shaped concert halls and all other public program creating a hollowed
out block. The building reveals its contents to the city without being
didactic; at the same time the city is exposed to the public inside in a
way that has never happened before.
 The “remaining spaces” between the exposed public functions consist
of secondary serving spaces such as foyers, a restaurant, terraces,
technical spaces and vertical transport. A continuous public route
connects all public functions and “remaining spaces” located around
the Grand Auditorium by means of stairs, platforms and escalators: the
building becomes an architectural adventure. The loop creates the
possibility to use the building for festivals with simultaneous
performances; the House of Music.
 Casa da Musica is visually and spatially defined by its
striking faceted exterior from which its conventional
interior spaces have been extracted.
 The buildings 400mm thick faceted shell and the two
1m thick walls of the main auditorium are the
buildings primary load carrying and stability system.
 The auditorium walls act as internal diaphragms tying
the shell together in the longitudinal direction.
 The concrete mix is used for external facades.
Site plan
Ground Floor Plan

Elevations
 Ann Mary John
 Ann Sara Abraham
 Aparna J S
 Ashish Vinayak
 Atul Nath

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REM KOOLHAAS

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