Amplified Music Hall, Grenoble, France
2008
Hérault Arnod Architectes



Electronic music is a new subject for architecture. For the Grenoble project, the aim was to invent a specific architectural system for a new type of spectacle and relationship with the public, whilst allowing concerts with a more traditional configuration. The site is a former industrial district, now being converted. The hall will be built next to the Magasin, the Grenoble Centre for Contemporary Art, installed in a hall built by the Eiffel workshops at the end of the 19th century. In this new district, with its as yet unformed and uncertain identity, the project is a volume with five branches which gives equal importance to each of its sides. This multidirectional and autonomous shape will remain unaffected by future developments, and there is no risk of its identity being weakened in the future, whatever happens around it. The industrial past of the site inspired us to pursue a raw, efficient and rough architecture, with an envelope made of railway sleepers. The appearance of this timber gives the architecture a character that is part archetype, part hyper-modernity. This first layer allows a glimpse into the more colourful and mysterious world of the interior.

This strange body reflects the energy of music. It is a shape that evokes both the absorption and diffusion of sound, each branch is like an auricle of the ear or the cone of a megaphone. The whole forms an organism with the concert hall as its heart. From this heart, the other spaces are structured into each of the five branches, laid out in a circle, which opens in different directions, capturing the different flows. The space is conceived so that during the concert each spectator can move, shift ambience, and construct their own experience. The hall is designed like an asymmetric shell allowing the possibility for different ways of using space and different types of show. Several platforms at different heights are provided for the DJs. Extending out from the hall, the “chill-out” is a calmer space, with lower sound levels and a sort of “lounge” atmosphere. From the “chill-out”, people can go out onto the balconies to smoke a cigarette during the concert.

Each branch is treated equally, meaning that all the parties must play their role for the show to work: musicians, technicians and audience, all converge towards the centre and all, in their own way, construct the experience.
The two pavilions on the Eastern side form roofed entrance porticos framing two urban stages, a metaphor of the stage on the urban scale. The two porches are raised. In them, we are elsewhere, on the threshold of the mysterious world of the interior, but still in contact with the reality outside. At arrival, the audience becomes part of a stage performance, actors in the urban spectacle, blurring the classical distinction between actor and spectator.



Hérault Arnod Architects

Concert Hall for Electronic Music, Grenoble - Facts:

Location
· Grenoble (Isère)

Client
· Ville de Grenoble

Project management
· Hérault Arnod Architectes, lead architects
Project team : Camille Bérar (project manager)
Competition team : Patrick Arrighetti, Pierre Bouchon-Césaro, Nicolas Broussous
· Nicolas Ingéniérie, fluids
· Batiserf, structure
· Cabinet Denizou, economics
· Ducks Scéno, scenography
· Lasa, acoustics

Area
· 2 287 m² total floor area

Cost budget
· 4.58 million excluding VAT (scenic facilities included)

Timetable
· Rough plan October 2007
· Delivery due 2010

Programme
· Concert hall
· Hall
· Restaurant
· « Chill »

Images : Labtop-rendering, Hérault Arnod

Amplified Music Hall Grenoble, France images / information from Hérault Arnod Architectes Dec 2008



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Grenoble Music Hall France : page - adrian welch / isabelle lomholt