The new shape of opera
Though it may look like a steel-clad battleship, the Bavarian State Opera pavilion is light-weight (relatively) and transportable. Recently erected for the 2010 Opera Festival in Munich, the pavilion marks the end of a 130-year gap since the Bavarian State Opera last inaugurated a performance space. Situated beside the main opera house, the architecture firm Coop Himmelblau wanted to design a structure that not only showed a marked contrast between the traditional opera house, but they also wanted the design to be based on acoustical principles, meaning that not only does the concert space have excellent acoustics, but the shape of the outer shell reflects sound patterns.
I’ll explain. Using soundscaping methods developed by Le Corbusier and architect/composer Iannis Xenakis, Coop Himmelblau used tone sequences from Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” and Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” and translated them into a coputer-based 3D model (see photo below). The size and shape of the spikes is the result of the combination of these two forms, a perfect blend of past and present.
