Arup’s involvement was confirmed after a competition organised by Krakow city officials led to Ingarden & Ewy Architects being appointed as the lead architects, with Arata Isozaki & Associates confirmed as the design consultants. Ingarden & Ewy invited Arup to co-operate on the project.
Sam Wise, Arup associate and team leader for the venue consulting side of the project, told II that the venue operators’ intention for the principle auditorium is to create “an international standard concert hall. It will be a vineyard-style hall, and that is more challenging than a conventional shoebox-shaped room in terms of the detailed acoustic design that is needed to get the sound reflections to the people. [At the end of the process] we need to have a venue that will be suitable for amplified and unamplified events, and conference commitments.”
Arup’s acoustic design team will be led by Raf Orlowski, who observed that the new venue “will be pivotal in reinforcing Krakow’s position as a centre of culture and business excellence. Being designed for classic, contemporary and 20th century music, the facility will have the best look and sound of any building of its kind in Poland.”
The Krakow Congress Centre and Concert Hall is only one of numerous significant commitments on Arup’s worklog at present. Projects in the UK and Ireland include Kings Place in Central London, BBC Hoddinott Hall in Cardiff (set to become the new home of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales), and the new Opera House in Wexford, Ireland. Further afield, Arup is also working on the Adnan Saygun Sanat Merkezi (ASSM) in Izmir, Turkey, and the new Greek National Opera building, which is being constructed as part of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre.
Picture: Ingarden & Ewy Architects
