Casa da Música (English: House of Music) is a major concert hall space in Porto, Portugal which houses the cultural institution of the same name with its three orchestras Orquestra Nacional do Porto, Orquestra Barroca and Remix Ensemble. It was designed by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas with Office for Metropolitan Architecture and Arup-AFA, and was built as part of Porto's project for European Culture Capital in 2001 but was only finished in the first half of 2005 and immediately became an icon in the city. The Building engineers were Arup (London) together with Afassociados (Porto). Inside Outside (Petra Blaisse) designed the large 13 curtains, ranging from 22mx15m to 65mx8m, and the gold leaf wood grain pattern on the large auditorium.
Although the opening day concert took place on the April 14 with Clã and Lou Reed, the building was inaugurated on April 15, 2005 by the Portuguese president. The Prime-minister and many other notable politicians and Porto society were present for the concert by the Orquestra Nacional do Porto.
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Casa da Música was built just across from one of the main traffic and business centers of the city, Praça Mouzinho de Albuquerque , known as Rotunda da Boavista. The place where the building now sits used to be a holding place for the trams that ran in Porto. Although construction ran over four years over schedule and cost roughly €100M, the building process brought new engineering challenges in order to create its unusual configuration.
The building's design has been highly acclaimed worldwide. Nicolai Ouroussoff, architecture critic from the New York Times, classified it as the "most attractive project the architect Rem Koolhaas has ever built" and saying it's "a building whose intellectual ardor is matched by its sensual beauty". He also compares it to the "exuberant design" in Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. "Only looking into the original aspect of the building, this is one of the most important concert halls built in the last 100 years". He compares it to the Walt Disney Concert Hall, in Los Angeles, and the Berliner Philharmonie.[1]
Casa da Música has two main auditoriums, though many other areas of the building can very easily be adapted for concerts and other musical activity (workshops, educational activities, etc.).
September 2008 Casa da Musica hosted the Orquestra Nacional do Porto taking part in explorative public presentations where performed music was captured alongside musician's and conductor's expressive gestures. Various sensor networks sourced and translated musical expressions into computer driven visual interpretations of lighting, projected images, and real-time improvisations for the audience to experience added nuance of performance. A scientific article informs on the concept.[2]
Scientific articles are also published on special needs performances/workshops in Casa da Musica 2007[3] & 2008.[4]
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