Cloud tower, Grafenegg, Austria

Object Type
Outdoor Stages

Client
Grafenegg Kulturbetriebsgesellschaft mbH, St. Pölten

Architects
the next ENTERprise - architects, Wien

Seats
1730

Completion
2007

Expertises
Measurements Building Physics
Building Acoustics
Sound Isolation
Room Acoustics
Electronic Room Acoustics
Audiovisual System Design

The Cloud Tower in the Grafenegg palace gardens is an open-air pavilion that is used as a stage in summer and as an attraction for visitors on extended walks in the English landscape park at other times of the year. The gracefully sculpted geometry of the structure merges quite naturally with the garden landscape. In 2007, the Cloud Tower won the Clients‘ Award of Lower Austria.

In terms of room acoustics, open-air theaters are special venues since they do not enclose a certain volume. Due to the lack of indoor reflections, direct sound is decisive for the transparency and clarity of music and speech. Emulating Greek amphitheaters and Roman arenas, the Cloud Tower‘s stands are steeply raked in order to ensure the best possible access to direct sound for the audience. In front of the stage, there is a large open area which ensures that the floor sound reflections forming there reach all seats unobstructedly. In addition, the sound-reflecting stage enclosure provides brief reflections for the audience. The design of the Cloud Tower itself as well as of the stands screens most of the ambient noise; the result is a very low background noise level with a good intelligibility for speech and musical performances.

Image Copyright
1 MBBM-BSO
2 MBBM-BSO
3 MBBM-BSO