World class architect Zaha Hadid has delivered her latest creation of the spectacular new chamber music hall design in Manchester, England. The interior design is specially design to house solo performances of the Johann Sebastian Bach’s music. The chamber music itself has been installed within Manchester Art Gallery for the Manchester International Festival 2009. Main objection of the project is to create a near-perfect environment for the audience to experience some of the world’s most beautiful chamber music.
The chamber music hall’s interior comprised of voluminous ribbon swirls, carving a spatial and visual response to the intricate relationships of Bach’s harmonies. As the ribbon careens above the performer, cascades into the ground and wraps around the audience, the original room as a box is sculpted into fluid spaces swelling, merging, and slipping through one another.
The ribbon itself consists of a translucent fabric membrane articulated by an internal steel structure suspended from the ceiling. The surface of the fabric shell undulates in a constant but changing rhythm as it is stretched over the internal structure. It varies between the highly tensioned skin on the exterior of the ribbon and the soft billowing effect of the same fabric on the interior of the ribbon.
Pivotal to its function is the performance of the ribbon. It has been designed to simultaneously enhance the acoustic experience of the concert while spatially defining a stage, an intimate enclosure, and passageways. It exists at a scale in which it is perceived as both an object floating in a room as well as a temporal architecture that invites one to enter, inhabit and explore.
Client: Manchester International Festival
Program: Chamber Music Hall
Architects: Zaha Hadid Architects
Design Team (Zaha Hadid Architects): Melodie Leung, Gerhild Orthacker
Accoustic Consultant: Sandy Brown Associates
Fabricator: Base Structures
Tensile Structural Engineer: Tony Hogg Design Ltd
Site: Manchester Art Gallery, T1 Gallery
SiteArea: 17m x 25m
Via. Photography by Luke Hayes
This is an amzing chamber hall. I would love to go see a concert here! Thanks for posting about it.