Culture Centre in Aachen, D
description

The L uxembourg office in particular has been heavily involved in the field of buildings for culture. T his interest certainly has to do with the fact that François Valentiny is an opera lover and passionate concertgoer, but has even more to do with the spatial and architectural opportunities that such “special buildings” offer the designer. I t is certainly true that nowadays cost-benefit calculations are applied to this area, too – indeed often rigorously, see the “House for M ozart”. But if the concept of a gesamtkunstwerk is still possible in any area of architecture then this can only be in the case of opera houses and theatres, museums and other cultural institutions. Without a doubt the task of designing the E uropean C ulture C entre at K atschhof in A achen was especially complex. Here, in terms of the brief, the task was to blend very disparate functions such as culture centre and forum, citizens’ centre as well as commercial and ancillary functions. Here everyday functions encounter the aspiration to create a festive, possibly even ceremonial framework for very different kinds of cultural events. This project reveals a continuous thread running through all of HVP’s work in this area. I t does not shift the contemporary possibilities – constructional, material, or formal – into the foreground (although it certainly uses them), but seriously examines the historic location and the idea of unity that has developed over centuries and dates back to C harlemagne. This is certainly not conservative architecture. T he foldings, the tiltings of surfaces, the care with which a trivial stepping of the rooftop level was avoided, all pay tribute to the place. A s does the choice of materials for the façade: a copper cladding that is drawn monolithically over the building.
DATA

Client: City of Aachen