In tune

The first in a series of short videos takes us behind the scenes at a trio of progressive European concert halls

Scenography of Space is a series of short films – created by the global creative agency PLANE–SITE – that explores the architectural concepts behind four progressive concert halls: Harpa in Reykjavik, the National Forum of Music in Wrocław, and the Philharmonie de Paris.
 
All three projects transcend the concert hall’s rarefied status as a fusty institution. Rather, their architects have all set out with more holistic goals, creating multifunction spaces that seek to inspire a wider audience rather than simply the cloistered classical music community. The approach taken by Henning Larsen Architects with Harpa – a geometric glass hall in the Icelandic capital – is neatly summed up by Edward Arenius, an acoustics and theatre director at Arup. The hall, he explains, is based on ‘the materiality of Iceland’, purposefully referencing its landscape. This sensitivity to its surroundings, he surmises, makes the hall an inherently communal building. It’s an inclusive approach that is mirrored in the other two case studies.

Music: Featherlight by Lee Rosevere

Ellie Stathaki is the Architecture & Environment Director at Wallpaper*. She trained as an architect at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and studied architectural history at the Bartlett in London. Now an established journalist, she has been a member of the Wallpaper* team since 2006, visiting buildings across the globe and interviewing leading architects such as Tadao Ando and Rem Koolhaas. Ellie has also taken part in judging panels, moderated events, curated shows and contributed in books, such as The Contemporary House (Thames & Hudson, 2018), Glenn Sestig Architecture Diary (2020) and House London (2022).