In the woods above the well-known French spa town of Evian, a new concert hall, La Source Vive, is shaped like a horse's hoof and is as finely tuned as a Stradivarius.
Fifty years ago, Antoine Riboud, then CEO of Danone Foods, created a classical music festival here. When he hired Mstislav Rostropovich as artistic director, the great cellist requested a new concert hall, something between a Russian dacha and Yehudi Menuhin's tent in Gstaad. In response, the maverick French architect Patrick Bouchain created La Grange au Lac, a large, rustic wooden space with chandeliers, inaugurated in 1993.
Explore the new Evian concert hall
Fast forward to 2017, when another French philanthropist and music lover, Aline Foriel-Destezet, was looking to build a concert hall of her own. She saw La Grange au Lac, was charmed, and hired Bouchain. After searching for a location, they chose to place the new building next to Bouchain's earlier creation. 'My life has been exceptional, because 30 years apart, I received pretty much the same command from two different people,' says the architect, 'and both gave me the same freedom.'
Bouchain told Foriel-Destezet he wanted to work with a partner, someone who would do the heavy architectural lifting while he acted as artistic director. He had become friendly with Philippe Chiambaretta, whose firm, PCA-Stream (behind Paris' Stream Building), employs a design approach based largely on science and exploration. The two men's offices were minutes apart, and they frequently met over coffee to discuss theories and ideas.
The first step was a much-needed restoration of the 1,000-seat Grange au Lac, which would now be devoted to symphonies. Then the architects created a smaller, complementary building with 500 seats, for chamber music concerts and musical recordings, La Source Vive. The architects also tore down the existing foyer and replaced it with a new one that leads to both concert halls, a wood-and-glass structure that references a Novarina-Prouvé building in Evian. Together, the buildings form a complex named Les Mélèzes (for the surrounding larch trees), with a programme of music and performing arts throughout the year.
‘It's interesting for an architect to have this type of command, where you're not only looking, but listening, too’
Philippe Chiambaretta
Music was the driving element for La Source Vive's design. 'It's interesting for an architect to have this type of command, where you're not only looking, but listening, too,' says Chiambaretta. He and Bouchain worked closely with violinist Renaud Capuçon, the current director of the Rencontres Musicales d'Evian festival, who told them he wanted a sound that was 'warm and silky', citing favourite venues such as the Vienna Musikverein. A key member of the team was the internationally renowned acoustician Albert Xu, who passed away at age 89, just as construction started.
La Source Vive's footprint was imposed by nature; since the team wanted to avoid cutting down any trees, they chose a round clearing that was practically bare. The number of seats determined its volume, as another rule in acoustics is about 11 cubic metres of volume per audience member – enough space for the sound to bounce around.
‘The form [of the digital model] resembled a brain, and we had scans, like MRIs, where we could know the reverberation time for each seat’
Philippe Chiambaretta
The design was an iterative process, guided by acoustic parameters such as reverberation time – ideally 1.8 seconds. Concert halls come in two main forms: a rectangular shoebox or a 'vineyard', with seating surrounding the stage. La Source Vive became a hybrid of the two, an oval shape with a conical roof. Bouchain made models out of wood or plaster, while Chiambaretta’s studio created a 3D digital model, inputting different shapes and materials to simulate sound quality and sightlines. 'The form resembled a brain, and we had scans, like MRIs, where we could know the reverberation time for each seat,' says Chiambaretta. 'It was crazy.'
At every stage of construction, acousticians from Meta captured sound at different points in the room and compared the results with the architects' predictions. 'Each time we remeasured, correcting the model to be sure the sound would be perfect,' says Chiambaretta. 'Because we knew if we screwed up, if we ended up with two seconds of reverberation, Capuçon and Aline would kill us.'
Specialised artisans used age-old techniques, such as plastering the walls with trowels. 'All the great concert halls of the 19th century are in plaster,' says Bouchain, a master of materials. The unpainted plaster is sculpted with squiggly lines that resemble an electrocardiogram, closer together at the bottom than at the top, for optimal reverberation.
Chiambaretta compares the building's shell to an onion, layered with plaster, concrete, a wood frame, and finally the envelope in oiled copper, an aesthetic choice that allows it to blend into the surrounding woods. Above the stage, acoustic aluminium panels open like a camera aperture, exposing an oculus in the ceiling. That way, says Bouchain, 'the musicians can rehearse by daylight rather than artificial lighting'.
Two-person seats like little sofas are made from orangey-beige leather (rejected by fashion houses due to small imperfections), and padded for comfort and sound quality. They can be moved around, even close to the instruments, offering an accessible experience for the hard-of-hearing.
Six months before opening, everyone who worked on La Source Vive was invited to a special concert to thank them and test the sound in the presence of an audience. This was followed by a 'technical' concert and more tweaking of the interior – like an instrument, the room's sound can be tuned from one concert to another. In mid-June, the venue had its first challenge, hosting a concert for world leaders gathering at the G7 summit.
And on 24 June, the Rencontres Musicales season finally opened at La Source Vive with a quartet that included Capuçon and superstar cellist Yo Yo Ma. The sounds of Brahms and Schumann were warm and silky, just as requested. As the musicians left the stage, Yo Yo Ma thanked the two architects, sitting in the front row.
Afterwards, Chiambaretta reflected on the experience. 'It was a good lesson to work with musicians who are used to playing together. That’s rare in architecture, where we’re usually competing. But Patrick couldn't have done this project without me, and I couldn't have done it without him.'