Via Dezeen
Architects: ÉPÍTÉSZ STÚDIÓ
Project name: KODÁLY KÖZPONT / KODÁLY CENTRE – CONCERT HALL in PÉCS
Location: PÉCS /Hungary/
Client: the city of PÉCS
Interior design: László (f) Rádóczy, Zsolt Tolnai – PÉCSÉPTERV
Acoustics: Éva Arató, Anders Christian Gade, András Kotschy
Landscape: Sándor Mohácsi, Borbála Gyüre – S73
Design period: 2007 – 2010
Gross area: 11.200 m2
Completion date: December of 2010
The Hungarian city of Pécs was selected as European Capital of Culture for 2010. The new Kodály Concert- and Conference Centre is one of the main projects for this event. There are two identities constituting the units of our world: inside and outside. Object and space. Extrovert and introvert. Active and passive.
Community life and internal silence. The building that we can walk around, and the hall where music surrounds us. The building itself is vivid, moved by the dynamic symmetry of golden ratio. The hall itself is tranquillity filled by the symmetry of intellectual serenity. It all derives from the mathematical basis of our world.
“Music that conveys universal truths itself, shows more direct connections with the physical and spiritual world order.
There are two sequences appearing significant in the sythesis of our world. As demonstrated below, both begin with the number 1 and 2.
In the first sequence, each number is multiplied by 2 to get the next one, while in the second sequence, each remaining number is the sum of the previous two. Both sequences can be found in European music.
The first sequence is represented by the symmetry of classical music. It is filled by pursuit of balance.
Not like in case of the second sequence.
The Fibonacci-sequence is the most common presentation of golden ratio by integers. Golden ratio is usually called dynamic symmetry. Its most beautiful realisation in music is perhaps the 1st movement of Music for Strings, Percussions and Celeste by Bartók. Golden ratio as a characteristic of the living world is perfectly efficient to express fight, struggle and tension of existence, just as balance to express the intellectual serenity.
Bartók composed his most impressive pieces – Music, Sonata for Two Pianos – implying the sphere of golden ratio in the 1st movements, then principle of classic symmetry in the last movements. The two systems relate to each other just like two worlds – more precisely, as two faces or sides of the same world. The first one applies balance as a guiding principle, the second one applies tension. They are connected in mutual presupposition and exclusion, they compose unity and contrast.”
/after Ernő Lendvai and Erzsébet Tusa.
The architectural characteristics of the concert hall are in close harmony with the common principles of design and musical composition. Dynamics and balance. Two sides of the same world.
The building elements: stone and wood. Hard and soft. Cold and warm. Age of myriads and centuries. Enduring and intimate. The ancient white stone snail slowly embraces the concert hall lined with pure wood. As if we were listening to music inside a gigantic wooden shape or instrument.
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