The Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg’s stunning new concert hall designed by the Swiss architectural team Herzog & de Meuron, has been presented this morning at an official topping-out ceremony accompanied by a weekend of celebrations.

Hamburg is building a cultural landmark: The Elbphilharmonie Hamburg. In the middle of the flow of the river Elbe on approx. 1.700 reinforced concrete piles a building complex is emerging, which, in addition to three concert halls, will encompass a hotel, 45 apartments and the publicly accessible Plaza with a 360° panoramic view of the city. The centerpiece of the Elbphilharmonie is also one of the most exciting construction challenges in Europe at the moment: A world-class concert hall at a height of 50 meters with seating for 2.150, which for soundproofing reasons is de-coupled from the rest of the building.


Herzog & de Meuron
Project Description Elbphilharmonie Hamburg
A New Location in the City - The City in a New Place

The Elbphilharmonie on the Kaispeicher marks a location that most people in Hamburg know about but have never really noticed. In the future it will become a new center of social, cultural, and daily life for the people of Hamburg as well as visitors from all over the world. The Kaispeicher A, designed by Werner Kallmorgen and constructed between 1963 and 1966, was originally used as a warehouse for cocoa beans until close to the end of the last century. The new building has been extruded from the shape of the Kaispeicher, it is perfectly congruent with the brick block of the older building on top of which it has been placed. The top and bottom of the new structure are, however, entirely different from the quiet and plain shape of the warehouse below. The broad, undulating sweep of the roof rises to a total height of 110 m at the Kaispitze (the tip of the peninsula), sloping down to the eastern end, where the roof is some 30 m lower. Correspondingly the bottom of the new superstructure has an expressive dynamic. Specific zones are defined by either wide, shallow or steep vaults.

In contrast to the stoic brick façade of the Kaispeicher, the new building above has a glass façade, consisting in part of curved panels, some of them cut open. The glass façade transforms the new building into a gigantic, iridescent crystal whose textured appearance changes as it catches the reflections of the sky, the water and the city.

The main entrance to the building lies to the east. The elongated escalator curves slightly as it leads to the top of the Kaispeicher, so that it cannot be seen in full from one end to the other. The escalator offers its users a surprising spatial experience through the entire Kaispeicher, past a large panoramic window.

Upon reaching the top of the Kaispeicher, visitors find a unique open space, a new public Plaza above the city. Sitting on top of the Kaispeicher and under the new building, it is like a gigantic joint between old and new.

This, too, is a new public space that offers unique panoramic views. Along its edges, vault-shaped openings create spectacular, theatrical views of both the River Elbe and the City of Hamburg. Further inside, a deep vertical opening provides constant spectacular visual relations between the Plaza and the cavernous foyer of the Philharmonic Hall above. Restaurant, bar, café, and the hotel lobby are located here, as well as access to the lobby of the new concert halls.

The design for the new Elbphilharmonie is a project of the 21st century that would have been inconceivable before. The principle design idea of the Philharmonic Hall as a space where orchestra and conductor are located in the center of the audience, is a well known typology.

It is also not uncommon that the architecture is composed of an arrangement of tiers that take their cue from the logic of the acoustic and visual perception. But here this logic leads to another conclusion. The tiers are more pervasive; tiers, walls, and ceiling form a spatial unity. This space, rising vertically almost like a tent, is not determined by the architecture alone but by the 2.150 listeners and musicians who congregate in order to make and listen to music. The towering shape of the hall defines the static structure of the entire volume of the building. And is correspondingly reflected in the silhouette of the building as a whole.

The Elbphilharmonie will become a landmark visible from afar, lending an entirely new accent to the horizontally conceived city of Hamburg – as an expression of reaching out into new territory, into the harbor area along the shores of the River Elbe.