Henning Larsen Architects - Uppsala Concert & Congress Hall

Tuesday, 24 March 2009 01:47

With its reflective metallic facades, Sweden's Uppsala Concert and Conference Hall appears as a large, split crystal. The vertical cleft in the building pro-vides the public with access from two sides - from the old historical town and from the modern and lively Vaksala Square.

From the horizontal cleft on top one has a magnificent panorama of Uppsala’s characteristic sky-line dominated by the castle, cathedral and library. With its 37 metres the building is a significant part of the city’s remarkable silhouette hence contributing to a new modern chapter in the city’s history.

The concert and conference hall comprises approx. 14,600 square metres covering a total of eight levels including the basement. The concert hall houses exhibition areas and three halls, of which the largest with 1,125 seats is planned for symphonic music.

The building’s public spaces are grouped around the entrance hall’s vertical cleft and can be accessed from the central escalators.

On the arrival floor (level 2) there is an exhibition and banquet hall with room for 600 guests. Here there is also a large, open café with a south oriented terrace.

The long red escalators connect the building’s different foyer areas and lead visitors from the arrival hall up to level 3, where they are met by a magnificent view of Vaksala Square. Level 3 contains a large conference and music hall that seats up to 350 guests and a smaller mee-ting hall with room for 100. From level 3, the escalators continue in a spectacular continuous length of more than three floors up to the grand hall’s foyer on level 6 offering a unique panoramic view of Uppsala’s roof-tops and historical skyline.

The grand hall is the largest and most important room in the building seating up to 1150 guests from stalls to balcony. With its sublime acoustics and technical flexibility, the hall is designed for a large and ver-satile repertoire spanning from large symphony orchestra concerts to modern hip hop and jazz.

The grand hall’s spectator seating rises from stage level on level 5 all the way up to the rear balcony on level 8. Levels 3, 4 and 5 house a number of functions: offices, rehearsal rooms, backstage area, stage entrances, box seats and storage. Level 7 also houses a separate conference room.

Project Description and Credits:

Uppsala Concert & Congress Hall
Uppsala, Sweden

Client: Municipality of Uppsala
Construction period: 2004-2007
Gross floor area: 14,600 m2 (15,700 sqft)
Construction value: 36.3 mill. EUR ($52 mill.)

Type of assignment: Open international competition.

All photographs and text courtesy of Henning Larsen Architects.

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