Auditorium del Parco, L'Aquila, Italy

Object Type
Concert Halls

Client
Provincia Autonoma di Trento

Architects
Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Paris Atelier Traldi, Mailand

Timber Engineering
Milan Ingegneria, Milan

Seats
250

Completion
2012

Expertises
Room Acoustics
Building Acoustics
Measurements Building Physics
Sound Isolation

On April 6, 2009, a devastating earthquake almost completely destroyed the historic center of L‘Aquila and severely damaged the concert hall in the Castello. Following the idea of conductor Claudio Abbado and architect Renzo Piano, very soon a “temporary venue“ was planned and realized as a timber construc-tion with an extravagant architectural design in order to revive the social life in the center of L‘Aquila.

The auditorium seats an audience of approx. 250 and its podium is large enough for chamber music ensembles with up to 40 musicians. For achieving a good balance between loudness and reverberation when relatively large orchestras perform, a quite big specific volume of 14.4 m³ per person was required and realized. The architect designed the auditorium as a tilted cube measuring 16 x 16 x 16 m on the inside.
The podium forms the heart of the auditorium – it rises 40 cm above the surrounding floor. The multilayer wooden floor with its fir wood panelling is mounted on a very thin wooden supporting structure. Thus, it is an ideal floor structure that can be excited to vibrate perceptibly. The opening concert with the Orchestra Mozart Bologna under the baton of Claudio Abbado was a great success. The orchestra musicians unanimously praised the “warm, soft and yet transparent sound“. Maestro Claudio Abbado was enthused and very happy about the “excellent acoustics“.

Image Copyright
1 Nicola Vernesoni
2 Nicola Vernesoni
3 Nicola Vernesoni
4 MBBM-BSO