Music School in Dresden by Hammes Krause

Last Tuesday, the Carl Maria von Weber music school in Dresden celebrated the completion of the rough construction of their new music hall. The building is being constructed according to the competition design of the Stuttgart office Hammes Krause, which won the project in April 2004 when the studio was still called Brenner + Partner. The challenge for the architects was to design a standalone building in the city center on a narrow plot adjacent to the neoclassical school building, from which its musical purpose would be immediately evident. The construction program includes 30 soundproof rehearsal rooms, a rehearsal opera stage, and an acoustically demanding concert hall for 450 spectators. The building, with a total area of 2300m², will cost 11 million Euros. The architects see their new construction as a "contrast to the hermetically sealed mass of the historical school building." Their design features a lightweight structure and a consistent internal spatial concept, leading to a "natural densification" of plates and slabs arranged around the auditorium and artists. Due to the varying height arrangement of the auditorium, the audience will be more spatially connected to the stage and the entire building. The new hall posed great challenges for the structural engineers. Whether due to the complicated foundation at a high groundwater level or the complex (but acoustically supported) shape of the large hall, whose acoustics will be tested for the first time during the opening week at the beginning of the next school year. Link>