News: Today the Design Team Signed a Contract with Brno’s Leaders for a New Concert Hall

15 January 2018, 15:50
News: Today the Design Team Signed a Contract with Brno’s Leaders for a New Concert Hall

Today the design team made up of Tomasz Konior (POL), Yasuhisa Toyota (US) and Petr Hrůša (Czech Republic) and the representatives of the city of Brno signed a contract for the design documentation for a building permit and the design documentation for the second stage of the Janáček Cultural Centre. This will be the new concert hall that for decades Brno has been waiting for.

“This morning we went to take a look at a rehearsal of the Brno Philharmonic and it just confirmed how great it is to design a hall for such a beautiful city full of music lovers. I hope that with this we will open a new era of cultural and musical life here,” stated the architect and general planner of the team Tomasz Konior. He also recalled his previous work with Yasuhisa Toyota. “He is simply a genius in the area of acoustics. We worked together on the concert hall in Poland’s Katowice, which opened in 2014. I am looking forward to what we still have to achieve together with Professor Hrůša,” stressed Konior.

At the site Brno’s mayor Petr Vokřál expressed his hope that Brno will really get its concert hall. “I am sure that given that today we are signing the contract, this dream will become a reality. It is a great undertaking for the city. I hope that this team will give us the best, as they have done for other cities in the past,” stated Vokřál.

Design Team:

Tomasz Konior (1968)

General Designer of the Team

. Polish architect and town planner

. Founder, owner and main architect of the company Konior Studio

. Architect of the internationally acclaimed concert hall in Poland’s Katowice

. Holder of many international awards and prizes

Yasuhisa Toyota (1952)

Main Acoustician in the Team

. Director of the American branch of the company Nagata Acoustics, founded in 1971

. The company has worked on more than sixty concert halls throughout the world, with Toyota is main acoustician in fifty of them

. Among the most acclaimed halls are for example the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Suntory Hall in Tokio, the Helsinki Music Centre, and most recently the Elbphilharmonie Hall in Hamburg, and he has now been given the renovation of the concert hall of the Sydney Opera House

. He is also the main acoustician of the hall in, on which he cooperated with Tomasz Konior

. Testimony to the exceptional abilities of Yasuhisa Toyota comes from the events at the Walt Disney Hall, on which he worked with Frank Gehry. The orchestra was rehearsing for a ceremonial concert for the opening of the new hall and in the deeper tones it seemed to them that something was amiss – that the sound was not what it should be. They invited Mr Toyota, and he sat in the auditorium and for an hour listened to how the musicians played. He then got up, pointed to the roof and said: “Change this panel and that panel behind”. Later it turned out that the two mentioned wooden panels were of a different thickness than the others.

Petr Hrůša (1955)

Designer for the Building Part

. Brno architect and founder of the company Architekti Hrůša & spol., Ateliér Brno, s.r.o.

. Holder of many prestigious architectural awards

. Author of significant Brno buildings such as the Galerie Vaňkovka, Pavilion P at the Brno Exhibition Centre, the Administrative Centre Trinity or Domini Park, and his modifications of public spaces, such as for example Moravské náměstí, have also received awards.

Photo Brno Philharmonic

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