Elbe Philharmonic Hall, Hamburg

Herzog & de Meuron

Products

1023
Door handle fitting

In the 1950s, the Swiss ar­chi­tect, sculp­tor and de­signer Max Bill got to­gether with Ernst Moeckel to fashion a door handle that made design history as the ‘Ulm handle’. It, in turn, prompted Jo­hannes Potente to produce the FSB 1023, which has long served as an al­ter­na­tive to the common U-shaped models.

1023
Door handle fitting
34 1023
Window handle

Elbe Philharmonic Hall opens for all interested

There cannot be many people in Germany who have not heard of the Elbe Phil­har­monic Hall given the bumpy, pro­longed and pricey nature of its genesis. Its many mad-cap at­trib­utes notwith­stand­ing, the Hall still has much to commend it. Besides the im­pres­sive ar­chi­tec­ture of the new concert hall, this un­doubt­edly has some­thing to do with its unusual in­cep­tion. The idea of in­stalling a world-class concert hall in a derelict ware­house by the river Elbe came from a member of the public in 2001. Alexan­der Gérard ex­pounded his idea to Swiss ar­chi­tects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron and a first blue­print was drafted that sur­mounted the build­ing with a kind of coxcomb.

A public plaza affords access not just to those with concert tickets but to anyone who’s in­ter­ested. The im­pres­sive façade, which along with the crown­ing glory of the roof has made “Elphi”, as the build­ing has been lov­ingly dubbed, a new land­mark in the city of Hamburg, is a quite as­tound­ing ar­chi­tec­tural feat. 66,000 square feet in size, almost 365 feet up at its highest point, in­cor­po­rat­ing a thou­sand tonnes of steel, the whole thing is lit­er­ally rounded off by 6,000 cir­cu­lar sequins re­spec­tively 3 feet and 3 feet 8 inches in di­am­e­ter. Despite its airy, elegant looking undular shape, the roof is re­quired to be able to bear 8,000 tonnes. The con­struc­tional en­gi­neer was on site for 4 years instead of the sched­uled 6 months in the end.

Much con­sid­er­a­tion and work went into pro­duc­ing the large concert hall. Its acoustics are amongst the best in the world, partly on account of tests con­ducted on a full-scale model. The Japan­ese spe­cial­ist Ya­suhisa Toyota, who has co­or­di­nated the acoustics in some of the best halls in the world, mag­is­te­ri­ally op­ti­mised the hall de­signed by Herzog & de Meuron to the point where the au­di­ence have the feeling of sitting between the in­stru­ments. FSB was turned to for all the window and door handles in the build­ing, some equipped with its M 300 elec­tronic access man­age­ment system.

Building details

Photos: Oliver Heiss­ner

Location

Elbphilharmonie Hamburg

Platz der Deutschen Einheit 1
20457 Hamburg
Germany

Di­rec­tions

BESbswy