an international competition-winning concert hall shaped as a continuous public landscape
Sarajevo National Concert Hall is a competition-winning proposal for a new cultural landmark in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The project combines a 1,500-seat vineyard concert hall with a 500-seat chamber music hall, extending the public surface of the city into a continuous architectural landscape.
The design folds the surrounding park-scape into and beneath the ground, forming a continuous surface that wraps the foyers, auditoriums and service areas while creating an outdoor landscape above. Three spiralling access routes draw visitors from different points in the city and descend through the building towards the main auditorium tiers.
The bifurcated landscape creates entrances, daylight openings and spatial transitions between city, park, foyer and performance spaces. The surface expands and contracts as it moves through the building, accommodating different public events and creating a fluid relationship between urban space and acoustic interior.
The project won the two-stage open design competition and was exhibited at the Venice Biennale Metamorph in 2004. The design was developed in collaboration with Seb Joun and the Arup SoundLab, using acoustic simulation to optimise and refine the main hall.
| Project Location | Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina |
| Project Type | Concert hall, cultural building, public landscape, competition-winning proposal |
| Project Description | Competition-winning proposal for Sarajevo National Concert Hall, combining a 1,500-seat vineyard concert hall and a 500-seat chamber music hall within a continuous public landscape extending into the ground. |
| Architect | UFO Architecture |
| Competition Result | Winner, two-stage open design competition |
| Programme | 1,500-seat vineyard concert hall and 500-seat chamber music hall |
| Collaborators | Seb Joun; Arup SoundLab |
| Exhibition | Venice Biennale Metamorph, 2004 |
| Design Focus | Vineyard concert hall, chamber music hall, acoustic simulation, public landscape, folded ground, spiralling access routes, daylight, foyer landscape, cultural urbanism |
