The event marks the public opening of the first full-scale purpose-built concert hall in Scotland since 1990. The £17M building is the result of an international architectural competition, chaired by Eva Jiricna, and won by BDP's Glasgow office in 1998.
Located in Perth's historic Horsecross, once a thriving market area but more recently marginalized, Perth Concert Hall is viewed in the round and BDP's free form plan is a unifying response to the irregular edges of the urban fabric bounding the site. The Horsecross area has already witnessed significant urban regeneration, as a result of the impending opening of this new facility, which includes a streetscaping project by the local authority following completion of the Concert Hall.
Bruce Kennedy, BDP project architect for the Concert Hall said: "The distinctive form of the main auditorium is strongly expressed, both externally and within the foyer, to celebrate the building's function and create a contemporary architectural icon for Perth. The curved plan form minimizes the scale of what is a large civic building, allowing it to integrate successfully into the sensitive historic townscape."At the heart of the building BDP has designed a fully flexible 1,200 seat concert hall, the Gannochy Auditorium, which features uniquely configured floor lifts and movable seating wagons to provide both raked seating and a large-scale flat floor. The flexible format of the hall can also accommodate events such as conference, sports, fashion shows, dinner dances and even a motor show.
BDP Acoustics modelled the main auditorium's natural acoustic for orchestral music, with flexibility for a range of acoustic environments provided by retractable acoustic banners and powerful electro-acoustic systems. Commissioning results confirm that the auditorium will be an excellent venue for music events or speech.
In addition to the Gannochy Auditorium, BDP's design provides a smaller, day-lit 150 seat multi-purpose hall, the Norrie Miller Studio, which has been acoustically modelled can be fully blacked-out and can be sub-divided by means of a movable partition to form two smaller rooms.
A large-scale glazed open foyer, with café, bar and box office, forms a new civic space in Perth conceived as an extension of the new external public square which surrounds it. Green patinated copper was selected by BDP to clad auditorium, partly as a reference to the copper dome of the adjacent Perth Museum, but principally as a foil to the zinc, white precast concrete, white render and silver curtain walling of the envelope.
The client for the Concert Hall was Perth and Kinross Leisure, and the venue is now managed by Horsecross. The project started on site in 2003 and completed in Summer 2005 at a construction cost of £12.5M.
BDP was architect, interior designer and acoustic consultant. Other members of the team were: C&S, M&E consultant and fire engineer - Buro Happold; theatre consultant - Carr and Angier; QS - Gardiner and Theobald; project manager - GTMS; design and build contractor; Sir Robert McAlpine.
(Sarah Rushton-Read)
