The new Music School and Concert Hall in the Baltic city of Ventspils by haascookzemmrich STUDIO2050 with Studio MSV for Ventspils City Council is a highly distinctive and climatically sustainable building that houses a wide range of rehearsal and performance spaces.
Music in its many different forms plays an essential role in Latvian culture, lending communities distinct identities and serving as an important source of civic pride.
The new music school and concert hall is the centerpiece of the long-term program of urban rejuvenation in the Baltic port of Ventspils.
The project serves as an essential part of a new urban landscape, transforming Lielais laukums—a long-neglected park—into a vibrant focal point for the region of Kurzeme.
The Music School and Concert Hall in Ventspils has recently been awarded a 2022 International Architecture Awards Honorable Mention by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
The landscape of the plot is defined by a highly modulated topography: slopes, cuts, and intersecting planes define the character of the park, lending scale and providing a range of visitor amenities.
The transformed park with its central plaza, gardens, and water features enriches the visitor’s experience and provides a fitting backdrop to the striking forms of the new building.
The park is surrounded by well-established trees, providing a framework for the entire project.
The new music school promotes excellence in both teaching and performance of a wide range of music.
The project offers a wide range of performance spaces accessible to the public, with a classical concert hall capable of seating 600, complemented by a smaller “black-box” theatre, a music library, and an outdoor stage and amphitheater.
Extensive classrooms and backstage facilities are housed over three floors.
The highly distinctive roof shelters a range of spaces, both indoors and out, from the extremes of the weather and lends the building an immediately recognizable appearance.
The exposed nature of the site dictates that the building is considered as a free-standing object that addresses both the central square and the surrounding streets.
The building’s interiors are distinguished by the contrast between the rectilinear form of the concert hall and the informal arrangement of the surrounding foyers.
The foyers are flanked by the music library, green room, and extensive teaching facilities, before opening out onto Lielais laukums, in the form of terraces and balconies.
The concert hall is designed in response to the specific demands of classical music.
The size of the podium, audience distribution, and acoustic concerns dictate the size and proportions of the hall.
The concert hall is elegantly lined in timber, a material ideal for its acoustic properties.
The hall features a highly expressive organ prospect stretching across the rear of the stage.
The smaller hall is compact and inherently flexible: the outer wall can be opened up to provide for summer outdoor performances.
Both halls are acoustically isolated allowing for simultaneous use.
The design radically reduces energy consumption in operation by combining a high-performing building envelope with the most efficient demand-driven technical systems.
In combination with a high insulation level of opaque facades and triple glazing, heat losses are low and loads are strictly controlled.
Wind-protected shading integrated into box windows makes use of solar gains as a heating source in winter while controlling solar gains.
Periodically used classrooms and rehearsal spaces around the perimeter of the building have decentralized mechanical ventilation units with integrated heating recovery systems.
All classroom and rehearsal spaces have manually operable facade openings for fresh air supply that shut off decentralized mechanical air supply automatically.
Outside air intake for the central air handling units of the main and small halls, together with the public foyer, is routed through a series of ground-coupled earth ducts exploiting the relative soil temperature for pre-heating / pre-cooling of the outside air.
This substantially reduces heating and cooling demand and the sizing of the central technical plant.
Dependant upon occupancy levels and outdoor conditions the halls and the foyer can be naturally ventilated.
A geothermal heat supply is derived from an extensive foundation pile system combined with a heat pump, while the cooling demand is provided by the reversible heat pump in combination with heat rejection to the geothermal system.
In addition to this is the high-efficient heat recovery that saves energy in the large and small halls.
Sorption wheels have a heat recovery rate of up to 85% and additionally transfer air humidity from the exhaust air into the supply air providing comfortable levels of air temperature and humidity essential for the musical instruments and performers.
A highly distinctive building houses a wide range of rehearsal and performance spaces developed to the highest acoustic and energy standards.
The project champions an innovative environmental concept affording comfort and individual control with minimal resources.
Project: Music School and Concert Hall Architects: haascookzemmrich STUDIO2050 Design Team: David Cook, Eva Engele, Hanxiao Liu, Paul Lipan- Weber, Michael Kapeller, Dino Chai, Felix Beck, David Correra, Erik Martinez, and Sabine Vecvagar Architects of Record: Studio MSV Structural Engineers: Schlaich, Bergermann & Partner and SIA BKB General Contractor: SIA Merks Client: Ventspils City Council Photographers: Adam Mork Architectural Photography
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