Spanish architect Fernando Menis has created a concert hall with a "sponge-like" interior and movable fixtures that can be manipulated to fine tune the building’s acoustics.
The CKK Jordanki hall features a "picado" interior – meaning chopped in Spanish – which can contract and expand, and magnifies the high frequencies associated with classical music.
Most of the 20,000 square metre venue can be customised to suit the curators’ wishes.
Menis said: "Thanks to its dynamic ceiling, the building can be tuned to effectively absorb symphonic performances, chamber, theatre, opera, and film and meet any acoustic requirements the theatre designer requires."
The ceiling contains six motors which can move it by six metres. Walls and seats can also be removed.
"While the concert hall’s outer skin remains rigid, inside, the building acts like a fluid that brings together the different functions, slowly combining them and playing them off each other.
"The visual effect achieved is that of a natural object, a rock."
The interior of the project uses bricks, recalling the facades of the old town, while the exterior is clad in white concrete, broken at places to reveal the interior coating.
Menis said: "The fusion between old and new and that is achieved also through the materials which are going to be used for its construction."
The hall can also be extended outside for larger concerts.
Located in the medieval Unesco World Heritage site of Torun, the hall was commissioned in 2011.
Menis’ first used the picado technique on Tenerife’s MAGMA Art and Congress centre.
Images via Jakub Certowicz
