Graz, Austria
UNStudio
Post By:Kitticoon Poopong
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| Photo © Courtesy of Paul Ott |
UNStudio keeps Graz humming with its MUMUTH music building.
In the daytime, unStudio’s Haus für Musik und Musiktheater (MUMUTH) is a mysterious presence among historic houses on Lichtenfelsgasse Street in Graz, Austria’s second-largest city. A fine, stainless-steel mesh attached to gently curved steel frames completely masks the four-story, glass-and-steel structure as well as the spectacular concrete spiral that is the heart of the building. During the day, when only students and staff of the Kunstuniversität Graz (KUG) use its teaching and administrative spaces, they enter the building from the adjacent park at the west. But at night, interior lighting brings the building’s public identity as a theater to life, and the visitors enter the music house by a separate entrance on the south.
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| Photo © Courtesy of Paul Ott |
MUMUTH resulted from a 1998 competition held by KUG (also known as the Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst) that called for a theater for its 2,100 international students as well as rehearsal rooms, workshops, and a lounge. (The theater will also be leased for nonuniversity events.)
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| Photo © Courtesy of Christian Richters--The twist in the lobby joins with the large stair to bring the public up to the second-level auditorium, where a polished metal stair continues to the third floor. |
As a response to this program, the
Amsterdam firm’s principals,
Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos, divided the building structurally according to a concept van Berkel calls “blob-to-box and back again.” The foyer and public circulation spaces at the south form the blob; the theater at the north is the box. Joining the two—and organizing the whole—is a concrete spiral much like a
Möbius Strip, a single-surface form the architects explored in their Mobius House built in
Het Gooi, the
Netherlands, in 1998.
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| Photo © Courtesy of Iwan Baan--UNStudio joined up with Arup to design the “twist,” a spiraling element of two layers of self-compacting reinforced concrete over a steel framework that connects various floors. |
Van Berkel compares the twisting structure to serialism in contemporary music, since it shares the ability to absorb and regulate intervals, interruptions, changes of direction, and leaps of scale without losing its continuity. The architect’s convincing parallel between architecture and music was the determining factor in the jury’s decision in his favor. Indeed, although his helix is related to different musical principles, it bears a striking resemblance to the composer/architect
Iannis Xenakis’s polytopes of the 1960s, as he called his conceptual models for electronic light and sound projection.
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| Photo © Courtesy of Iwan Baan--The team conceived the spiraling structure as a continuation of the theater’s longitudinal walls, torqued from a vertical to a horizontal position in the foyer. The twist connection also supports the two floor planes that cantilever from the reinforced-concrete theater box. The architects and engineers placed the floor plates’ steel beams in a radial arrangement around the stairwell. Inclined steel columns around the perimeter provide additional support for the 66,736-square-foot structure. |
A number of factors delayed the beginning of construction of MUMUTH. First, the city did not want to detract attention from other projects it was sponsoring, such as
Peter Cook and Colin Fournier’s nozzled, biomorphic
Kunsthaus Graz. Furthermore, political changes jeopardized MUMUTH’s funding, which was only reinstated after elections in 2005. In the interim, the architects transformed the structural spiral from steel to a composite of steel and concrete. The delay also allowed the installation of new acoustic technology that became available in 2006 and promised to be flexible enough for a range of live acoustic to electronically amplified performances. (The system, and other technology, added between $7wmillion and $10 million to the building’s $23 million cost.)
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| Photo © Courtesy of Paul Ott--Ben van Berkel designed a stage set for the performance of Bach’s St. John Passion that reflected in plan his spiraling foyer structure. The auditorium can accommodate 450 seats, for any number of stage configurations. The patterned walls of lacquered wood have acoustical properties. |
As the public enters the building for performances, it is immersed in two levels of the dynamic concrete twist around which the massive spiral of the grand stairway rises to the music theater on the second floor and continues upward to a roof skylight. Van Berkel says the form was even more challenging than the spiral ramps of UNStudio’s much larger Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart. Its dimensions required such precision that self-compacting concrete was pumped from below instead of poured from above. The bold gesture could have done without the spindly red-carpeted, metal-encased stairway that piggybacks the twist from the theater level to the floor above.
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| Photo © Courtesy of Christian Richters--Informal recital spaces provide students at the music school with views of the surrounding neighborhood. The woven metal skin over the glass facade, which is silk-screened with stylized musical clefs, reduces solar glare. |
Compared with this showy structural tour de force, the sober 450-seat theater appears tame. However, its technology makes it anything but. Granted, the auditorium is a simple black box, except for the dark eggplant walls articulated by a shallow, three-dimensional lacquered wood of the silk-screen pattern printed on the building’s glass curtain wall. This modest setting, however, may well provide a long-sought answer to the search for a venue that can satisfy any number of purposes.
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| site plan--drawing Courtesy of UNStudio |
Until now, that search has yielded no perfect solution. Walter Gropius’s unbuilt Total Theater project of 1927, proposing the mechanical reconfiguration of a theater from proscenium to thrust to arena stages, had by the mid-1950s led to the design of pneumatically adjustable floor modules. Such modular halls, however, have proved more successful for long-running theater productions than for one-night musical performances, owing to the prohibitive cost of physical modification. Furthermore, their acoustics need to be adjusted physically. Zankel Hall in New York City’s Carnegie Hall, for example, remains for the most part unchanged for public performances since its inauguration in 2003.
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| ground floor plan--drawing Courtesy of UNStudio |
MUMUTH’s 108 floor modules—measuring in length from about 3 to 6½ feet and able to rise hydraulically to almost 11 feet and higher at the back—follow these precedents, albeit with easily moved seating. “The room is a stage that will be reconfigured at least three times a week,” says Georg Schulz, the university rector. An instance of such a change was the performance of Bach’s St. John Passion given in April 2009, in which the stage configuration echoed the Möbius Strip. Van Berkel designed the floor modules to be raised in a double-eight design and to stretch throughout the hall to place the choir within the audience.
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| second floor plan--drawing Courtesy of UNStudio |
The real innovation is the theater’s Meyer Sound Constellation system that can vary reverberation time electronically from just over one second (without the system) to over two seconds to suit a gamut of performances, from the spoken word to chamber music, symphonic music, opera, and jazz. Theoretically, the room could be adjusted electronically so Bach’s St. John Passion, for example, would sound much as it did in the larger church for which it was created. Assuming that current resistance to electronic enhancement of classical music can be overcome, the combination of refined electronic acoustics and inventive architecture could be thrilling for future performances.
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| section A-A--drawing Courtesy of UNStudio |
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| section B-B--drawing Courtesy of UNStudio |
The People Architect
UNStudio
Ben van Berkel, Caroline Bos with Hannes Pfau and Miklos Deri, Kirsten Hollmann, Markus Berger, Florian Pischetsrieder, Uli Horner, Albert Gnodde, Peter Trummer, Maarten van Tuijl, Matthew Johnston, Mike Green, Monica Pacheco, Ger Gijzen, Wouter de Jonge
Engineering:
Arup London:
Cecil Balmond, Volker Schmid, Charles Walker, Francis Archer
Consultants:
Engineering execution:
Peter Mandl ZT GmbH Structural Engineering, Arge Statik, Graz
Specifications:
Housinc Bauconsult GmbH, Vienna
Electrical:
Klauss Elektro – Anlagen Planungsgesellschaft m.b.H.
Acoustic and Building Physics:
ZT Gerhard Tomberger, Graz. Pro Acoustic Engineering Thorsten Rohde, Graz
Technique Stage:
e.f.f.e.c.t.s. techn. Büro GmbH, Klosterneuburg
Contractors:
General Contractor:
Steiner Bau Ges.m.b.H.
Cast in place concrete:
Steiner Bau Ges.m.b.H
Steel construction:
Zeman & Co Ges.m.b.H
Facade:
MA-TEC Stahl und Alubau GmbH
Interior:
P + P Holzbau GmbH / vectogramm
Mechanical:
Anton Hofstätter GmbH
Electrical:
Siemens Bacon GmbH & Co KG
Sprinkler:
Accuro Brandschutzanlagen GmbH
Landscape:
Granit Gesellschaft m.b.H.
Landscape design:
UNStudio
Site supervision:
Kessler Projektcontrolling GmbH | | The ProductsExterior Materials / suppliers:
Mesh facade:
GKD - Gebr. Kufferath AG
Interior Materials / suppliers:
Main Hall panelling and customized furniture:
P + P Holzbau GmbH / vectogramm
Handrails:
P + P Holzbau GmbH / vectogramm
Framing, Drywall and Plaster:
Trockenbau Ruckenstuhl GmbH
Metal Panels and Sheet Metal Construction:
Prodinger Metallbau GmbH
Glazing and Curtain Wall, Skylight:
MA-TEC Stahl und Alubau GmbH
Timber flooring:
Ahlers & Lambrecht GmbH
Flooring:
Terrazzo R. Bayer Betonsteinwerk GmbH
Suspended ceiling (lamellas):
Sport- und Akustikbau Ltd.
Doors:
Gleichweit Objekttischlerei Gmbh
Fire doors:
Tortec Brandschutztor GmbH
Lighting:
Xenon, Zumtobel, Siteco, Regent
Furnishings:
Vitra, Svoboda, Braun Lockenhaus GmbH
Curtains:
TÜCHLER Bühnen- & Textiltechnik GmbH
Bathroom appliances:
Vola, Catalano, Normbau
Fixtures and fittings:
Dorma, Glutz
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