Paul and Henry Concert Hall at Le Rosey
LOCATION:
Rolle (CH)
ARCHITECT:
Bernard Tschumi Architects
MODEL:
Space Lux
MORE INFO:
VENUE: www.roseyconcerthall.ch
ARCHITECT: www.tschumi.com
Located by Lake Geneva in the provincial town of Rolle, the hall is situated in the grounds of the renowned Le Rosey international boarding school, one of Europe’s most esteemed educational institutions. The rest of the campus is highly conservative in style, comprised of two- and three-story blocks with mansard roofs and stuccoed façades that evoke traditional Swiss Alpine design.
Tschumi’s design — the winner of an invited competition in 2009 — was chosen for its display of contemporary courage in the face of this context. While the instinct of many firms may have been to conform to the vernacular style and create an architectural chameleon to blend in with these historic surroundings, the Swiss architect ventured purposefully in the opposite direction. “The project is a careful study in contrasts,” Tschumi notes since the competition raised the question: how can architecture establish a complimentary relationship between the old and the new—a dialogue between tradition and modernity?… and last but not least, how can one make a highly sustainable, naturally ventilated 900-seat concert hall?
Tschumi’s strategy proposed a low, flat dome—a metal envelope that emerges from the landscape, shining in the sun by day and reflecting ambient campus light by night. Despite a tight budget, the concert hall provides a world-class auditorium that responds to stringent sustainability requirements while welcoming the world’s most prestigious orchestras. Exceptional measures were taken to meet the building’s acoustic and sustainability goals. Natural air taken from the outside is channeled and used to ventilate the concert hall and other parts of the building, 85% of which is naturally ventilated, creating one of the few naturally ventilated concert halls of this prominence in the world. Locally-sourced, non-toxic recycled OSB was used for wood finishes to meet acoustic, economic, and ecological requirements.
A key element of the design concept was Tschumi designing the hall as a “box within a dome” because the steel dome encapsulates the concrete structure that cradles the centerpiece of the complex: a timber box containing the hall itself.
The hall is constructed entirely from oriented strand board (OSB), chosen for its low cost, excellent fireproofing, and strong sound-absorbing properties.
Tschumi’s use of this humble material is notable for its honesty: the patchwork walls of the theater are an open display of the project’s economic constraints, but through unapologetic detailing, they possess an air of style and sophistication despite this fact.
Acoustic considerations were naturally a driving force behind the concert hall’s design, but certain peculiarities of the external context also played a key role: for example, rail tracks adjacent to the site meant that vibrations from trains could potentially affect the performance of the theater. To remediate this, the OSB box was placed upon large springs, almost seven feet high, which acted as giant shock absorbers to isolate the hall itself from any oscillations that may impact the rest of the building.
The void beneath the hall in which these springs are located also serves another purpose pertaining to sustainability: air is drawn in through perforations in the steel rainscreen cladding, before being channelled into the void and up through vents in the theater’s floor to naturally ventilate the auditorium.
Due to the strict acoustic & economic requirements of this project our company selected the Space Lux model: we created an innovative assembling system where long groups of chairs could be assembled without duplicating any of their arms that synchronize the tipping mechanism. Despite of its reduced envelope, both seat and back have inner metal structure for additional stability and outer plywood panels – same as the box seats and benches we created for the other areas of the hall.
The result is a building being regarded with growing affection by the pupils of Le Rosey and the wider public. “The public called it a U.F.O. but were ecstatic about the acoustics!