Auditorium comparison - El Palau de la Música Catalana & L'Auditori de Barcelona

Auditorium comparison

El Palau de la MĂşsica Catalana

L’Auditori de Barcelona

Marc Moll Juan _ History of Theatre

In this comparison we’re going to analize two buildings especially designed as auditoriums.

The two buildings are located in Barcelona, and are the two best references in the music field. The first is the Palau de la Música Catalana (1905-1908), and the second is the Auditori de Barcelona (1999).

Palau de la Música Catalana Music auditorium located in La Ribera district, in the old town of Barcelona. Designed by arch. Lluís Domènech i Montaner, one of the best known art nouveau architects in Barcelona (and also in all Europe).

Built between 1905 and 1908, it presents really advanced structural solutions for his ephoque, such as the application of big crystal walls.

The Palau integrates all the arts in the building, as sculpture, ceramic and window mosaics, or forge works. The building was payed by the catalan illustrated, which really loved music.

The Palau was destinated mainly to allow orchestras, instrumental auditions, corals and singers’ performances, but from the early days it has allowed also other assorted events, such as theatre performances or cultural and political acts (because of its centrality and importance as a popular symbol), and its finality was always to glorify folk catalan music and showing to Europe that its musical composers are up to their classical masters. Some of the best last centuries’ musicians have

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trod this scenario, as Richard Strauss, Daniel Barenboim, Igor Stravinsky, Arthur Rubinstein, Pau Casals, Frederic Mompou, Enric Granados, Manuel de Falla or Maurice Ravel).

Between 1982 and 1989 there was a first big restoration and extension, performed by Óscar Tusquets, adapting the building to the phisical and acoustic modern issues.

In 2000, it began a second extension on the parcel next to the building, occupied by a church until that moment. In that extension, a semi-interior square and a 6 floor tower were added to the main building.

In 1997, the building had been declared World Heritage by UNESCO.

Architectural Analysis From the beginning, the work was conceived as a transcendent place, where music were embodied not only as sound, but as architecture and sculpture, in each small space of the building. Shocking and surprising music that can be felt not only by hearing, but by all the other senses.

Domènech i Montaner achieved to create this kind of mixture between music and architecture, and also the fact of applying new building technologies to the Palau, as iron structures, enabling to create big crystal walls between the structure and making possible to illuminate the interior of the auditorium with soft, controlled natural light.

The first intervention, by Óscar Tusquets, consisted on adding a services block and res-

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toring the entrances and auditorium, being adapted to the modern confort demands. It was done in a real nice way, and got the FAD prize (Fomentation of Architecture and Design) for its intervention, specially for the good taste and control of each small detail.

On second extension, was attached an exterior square next to the building, supposing the new entrance of the building, but also maintaining the elder entrance because of its interest. On the antique facade that faces the square, was added a crystal wall, that encloses the access, but also allows visitors to see the Domènech i Montaner’s facade (that facade was originally covered by the church, but the architect treated and decorated that as a normal exterior facade, as if he knew that this facade has to be seen someday). The square was well-enclosed by adding a 6 floor tower to the side of the square that faces the south street. That tower, at the same time, solves the problem of the chamfer, creating an architectonically interesting facade. Since that intervention, this square supposed the new entrance of the building, maintaining the old entrance because of its interest.

Exterior Main facade South facade of the building. Since 1989, it was the unique entrance. At the ground floor, there are the original crystal box offices below three large arches formed by huge columns, and an impressive sculptoric group that represents the cultural tradition turned into music. After 1989, it lost importance as an

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entrance, but it maintains his historical and compositive interest, and is also used as the entrance, specially for the cafĂŠ. On these, at the first floor, appears a terrace covered by 14 corinthian columns dressed with mosaics, each one different than the other. On that columns, there are three busts (Palestrina, Bach and Beethoven) and a huge ceramic mosaic.

Art Nouveau facade Facing the adjacent square, it was designed as if it should have been seen, but the reality was that a church was covering all this facade. Actually, it was separated because of the incoming light with a separation of 3 metres between the church and this facade, but the architect decorated this facade for if in the future some day this facade could become visible, and finally it was. Since 1989, this church had been replaced by a square related to the Palau and this facade had been covered by a crystal wall that definetely allows visitors to see the original facade designed by the Art-Nouveau architect. This is now the most used entrance of the Palau.

East Facade In this facade, the building is divided in three in order to show what happens in the interior: access/entrance, concert hall and administrative part. These fissures between the spaces actually doesn’t appear at the interior, where all the spaces flow. The access part is in the corner, and here is repeated what happens in the main facade in order to turn arround the facade. The concert hall part is made with five large window walls, with hori-

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zontal separations corresponded to the interior auditorium balconies. The last zone becomes more opaque, similar as the first part of the facade. All three facade stretches are connected using an iron balaustrade in green tubes on the first floor.

Access: The hall welcomes the visitor with a burst of calid colours and brilliant textures created by the combination of little ceramic elements, quivering crystal lamps and caramel-coloured marbles. A few steps from the entrance, appears the great staircase, which branches to left and right ascending to the first floor landing, where it’s placed the auditorium access.

Halls Great Concert Hall: Placed on the first floor, it has a capacity of 2049 people: 688 in the orchestra, 321 in the amphitheater, 910 in the second floor, 82 in the galleries of the pipe organ and 48 more for special reserved. This hall, which had accomplished all the acoustic tests made inside, is decorated with colourful floral motifs, huge coloured windows enlighting the hall, columns dressed with mosaics, muse figures (as Wagner’s Walkyries), musician and composers busts, and leaded by two central elements: - A full decorated scenario, with a pipe organ placed on that, and surrounded by other decorative elements, such as busts at the two

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sides, and a semicircular ceramic mosaic wall decorated with 18 muses of the music whose upper bodies overflow the wall and become phisical, made by marble and playing wooden musical instruments. These muses represent all the kinds of music.

-A central skylight placed on the orchestra sittings, made by little pieces of coloured crystals. The central overflowing part is made in yellow tones, representing the sun, and the surroundings, in soft blue and white crystals, represents female motifs. This skylight and the lateral crystal walls are the ones who enable the natural light entrance, and the artificial lighting comes from inclined lights on the top of the mosaic-dressed columns.

Other Halls: El Petit Palau: Smaller auditorium inaugurated in 2004. With a capacity of 538 assistants, was created by allowing chamber concerts.

Rehearsal hall of L’Orfeó Català: Used for small-format concerts, conferences, presentations and L’Orfeó coral rehearsals.

Lluís Millet Hall: grabs his name from the creator of L’Orfeó Català (catalan musicians organisation). Meeting space and restroom placed on the first floor. From this space the visitors can access to the main facade’s column-covered terrace.

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Structure The Palau de la MĂşsica Catalana uses an innovative iron structure that lets the usage of crystal walls for natural lighting the great concert hall as a crystal box. Is the first construction in Spain that uses a crystal curtain wall. Under the great auditorium, the architect distrubuted all the rehearsal halls and the administrative rooms on a floor free of walls constructed by a grid of columns, decorated with floral chapiters and brick vaults.

Materials The exterior facades are coated with red bricks, coloured ceramic pieces, forged iron, tinted crystal windows and stone. During the night, the Palau is illuminated by warm yellow tones that give the sensation of being illuminated by gaslight.

The main hall has got white marble pavements and ceramic glazed molded ceilings. The great staircase is flanked by big crystal and metal lanterns on full-stone plinths.

All the public interior zone is dressed with ceramic mosaics, polycromathic floral crystals and allegoric figures.

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L’Auditori de Barcelona Rafael Moneo, the architect who designed the building says, about it, that it’s placed in a complicated location, a marginal zone in a blurred point where the Eixample (Barcelona’s grid of islands) ends, and where L’Auditori de Barcelona was going to impose above his environment as a monologue, as an autonomous erection of contained and compact architecture.

Architectural analysis Further than a complex of three concert halls, it supposed to be a little “city of the music”, with a space dedicated to the Museum of Music, and another for the High School of Music of Barcelona (ESMUC).

The compact form responds to the needings of the building. It’s not the result of a particular composition, but a silent object in a specific place whose exterior doesn’t reflect the richness of its interior life.

The most interesting of the building is how it responds at the same time as an enclosed volume and as a public space, creating a square (the “Lamp) inside the building that allows the pedestrian to cross the edifice to reach the other side creating a continuity on the street, while it serves to distribute the users to all the different areas of L’Auditori.

As the little city that it is, users can go around all the building spaces without going out of it by generous corridors and lobbies.

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Exterior The building is defined itself as a unique rectangular and compact volume covered by steel panels inserted in concrete frameworks that give a repetitive order to the facade and let the building a freedom for generating openings and free bearings.

The color of the panels covering the facade will change by the time, seeming to become newest because of the material propieties, obtaining a facade that will be brilliant and gorgeous when the zone will be dignified and the sorroundings will deserve its beauty.

The placement on a podium lets the light to get inside the lower levels, giving natural light to the basement floor, and generating at the same time a great number of interesting public spaces.

Just in the middle of the building, raised from the ground, it’s placed the spectacular “Llanterna” (Lantern) of L’Auditori. It’s an open-air hall that breaks the built volume while also responds to the urban environment permitting to cross the building as a street.

It’s a crystal structure of 30 m high, which offers the users a surprising view of the sky.

Placed diagonally to the central square, it breaks the building’s strict geometry and turns on the complex’s general lobby giving access to all the building spaces. At night, the “Llanterna” provides a lighting that invites to be admired.

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Interior spaces The building contains three music halls (Symphonic, chamber and polivalent, respectively) aside from all the necessary facilities. In total, some rehearsal orchestra and soloist halls, a High School for Musical Studies, a specialized library, several recording studios and musical experimentation labs, workshops, a restaurant and some stores.

Hall 1 – Pau Casals With a capacity of 2.200 spectators, is the biggest one of L’Auditori. Full dressed with maple wood panels (a popular wood used for the elaboration of musical string instruments), with different thicknesses depending on the wished sound diffraction, the Pau Casals concert hall is designed taking the great classic concert halls as examples, attempting to place all the sittings with a perfect angle of vision and the better acoustics. In order to accomplish that, Rafael Moneo took as a collaborator one of the best acoustic engineers of that moment, Higini Arau, and finally they achieved their aim. The dimensions of the hall are nearly perfect, with a 2x1 proportion and an horizontal ceiling.

For acoustically isolating the concert hall, were risen three thick walls and a double ceiling, in addition to put neoprene pillows under the columns in order to avoid vibrations.

On the ceiling of the 260 sqm scenario, plus the acoustic shell that works as a large diffuser, the ceiling and walls are coated with maple wood, so that returns the sound to the audience.

There is a foyer as a rest zone previous to entering to the concert hall space, designed in the same line of color tones and materials

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than the auditorium, but with icoming natural light through large windows oriented to the east, capting the sunlight in the morning and irradiating its brightness to the public space during the concert nights. It’s a widespread space so as to be used for conventions and lunch events.

Below the Pau Casals concert hall, there are placed an instrument store, some dressing rooms and closets, a small café for the staff, a nursing and some technic rooms.

Hall 2 – Oriol Martorell Designed for chamber, small orchestra and all kind of small group concerts, The Oriol Martorell hall has an audience of 600 spectators, so that they are always closer to the 120 sqm scenario, with a nice approaching between them and the artists. Full coated in cedarwood, its reddish tones offers the seclusion and proximity sensation intended by the architect. Like the Pau Casals concert hall, its has the same acoustic isolation solutions (structural and material). In this case, below the concert hall, there is the store of the Music High School, some dressing rooms, museum’s technical rooms and the archives of L’Auditori.

Sala 3 – Tete Montoliu It is a polivalent hall of 344 sqm with a folding orchestra of 400 sittings. The shape is rectangular and made with different woods, such as Okume, and it hasn’t got fixed seats on the scenario level, creating a flexible hall that offers different options for each performance done there. It is used as well

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as orchestra rehearsal room and as a recording studio, and is also used by the students of the Music High School of Catalunya (ESMUC), whose headquarters are placed above the Tete Montoliu hall.

Structure Exterior Structure The construction consists on a concrete structural cage covered by steel painted panels, where a several number of openings breaks the geometrical uniformity of the building, interrupting the rythm of the panel grid. This regular cage lets the building interiors be composed with total freedom because of the lack of irregular forms.

In the southern part of l’Auditori, the structure is extended with a concrete canopi around an exterior garden.

Symphonic Hall The ceiling is made by a system of crosswide structural beams crossed by a weft of lenghtwise beams, with a variable separation depending on the acoustic needings, connected to the Fibonacci sequence, in a scheme that balances specular and diffuse sound diffraction.

Due to the variable distance between the sce-

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nario and the orchestra, the concert hall section presents a diminishing of the total height to the backside of the hall as well as the usage of different thicknesses for the materials used on the ceiling in order to control the direction and the amount of sound reflection. Those things guarantees the same perfect acoustic qualities for each seat of the orchestra.

Conclusion Facade Unless the Palau de la Música Catalana is a building placed in the old town, it shows a volition of being isolated of the context, but actually well integrated, but demonstrating its hegemony above all the buildings around it, looked up by all of them. The most clear example of this hegemony is showed by the treatment that was given to the “hidden facade” (west) of the Palau, which originally was separated by 3 metres from the church next to the building with the intention of letting the sunlight inside the concert hall in both laterals, and also for designing a third exterior facade. Then, in the later extension works, the church disappeared and a glass curtain wall was placed in front of this facade for two reasons: creating an interior space in front of the facade as the new Palau’s entrance, and for showing the well worked ancient facade.

A similar procedure, but taken to the extreme, is the one used by Moneo in L’Auditori, creating an exterior box homogeneously treated in order to give an urban response in one of the

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Eixample’s limits as well as this permits a total freedom on the interior box spaces design, making possible to develope this city of the music. This reminds to the best Herzog & de Meuron’s projects, presenting the edifice as an homogeneous imposing piece in terms of urban planning, but with a delicate interior design that is not expected when viewed from outside.

Halls In both cases there is a grand concert hall highlighting above the others, but is in the Palau where this difference is bigger.

Both concert halls have a similar affordance, about 2.000 spectators, but not distributed in the same way. While the Palau de la Música has a vertical volume rounded forms and rich chromatism, L’Auditori is more defined by its horizontality and austerity on the color and material usage.

Acoustically, although both are really great examples of acoustic solutions, L’Auditori was constructed one century after and used all the modern technologies available, causing a better control and precision on the acoustic topics during the project.

About the role of the spectator on the performance, the Palau has got a more classical distributing method, but we can highlight that the seatings in the second and third floors are not separated by any partition, creating a popular atmosphere of unionism and links between the spectators. Meanwhile, in L’Auditori, the scenario is surrounded by seatings. That supposes a better interaction, between the musicians and the spectators, and also among the spectators themselves.

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Square In both cases we find a public integrated square as a representative common topic. The Palau’s square is placed not inside, but separated to the most influxed street (Sant Pere Més Alt, in the south facade) accquiring a double function as public space, but enough enclosed for being used mainly as a spacious entrance for the complex.

In L’Auditori, this public space is the engine of all the project from the beginning. In the modern era, when is indispensable to consider this social spaces, the great elevated lantern is used not only as a distributor to all the L’Auditori’s spaces, but as a sculpture and complex’s insignia, giving to it a monumentality, not as a citizen’s monument, but as a social life monument.

Ensemble As a set, regardless the temporary and dimension distances, we can say about both that, even though both are auditorium spaces, are also multifunctional places that represents the way of living in a big city as Barcelona is, specially in the case of L’Auditori, but also El Palau presents enough functions to ensure the continued usage during all the day, not only during the performances inside the halls. One with remarked historical and symbolical interest; the other without enough traveled path for highlighting this strength not only as a musical complex, but as a popular monument also. Gorgeous musical complexes built in different eras and contexts, only the time will tell if L’Auditori finally will be fitted in Barcelona citizens’ hearts and considered as more than only a great music center.

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