Nuremberg Concert Hall, Germany
In a recent international competition, architects Gilles Retsin and Stephan Markus Albrecht, were selected among 20 finalists for the extension of the Meistersingerhalle, located in Nuremberg, Germany. The architects collaborated with Bollinger-Grohmann engineers, Transsolar climate engineers and my acoustic team at Theatre Projects to design what could have been the world’s first concert hall building constructed using cross laminated timber (CLT).
Concrete has been an ideal building type for performance spaces with both its affordability and acoustic properties, but with its carbon footprint, we, acousticians who have been asking for thick concrete walls for years, must start thinking now about alternate materials as we move towards carbon-free building in the next 20 years. So, I wanted to explore a material that’s just as acoustically ideal, renewable, and one of the world’s oldest building materials—wood. The architectural world is already changing their thinking about wooden-based buildings—the trend started with residential construction, and now is expanding to skyscrapers and cultural buildings.
The concert hall is located in the Bavaria region of Germany, which is known for being one of Europe’s largest forestry regions, sourcing types of timber for construction purposes. This convenient location allowed the materials for the project to be sourced locally and efficiently.
Year: 2018
Architects: Giles Retsin and Stephen Markus
Theatre an Acoustic Design: Theatre Projects
Role : Project Technical Direction and Main Acoustic Designer
