Separated from the external world, the Grand Concert Hall has been surrounded by the four levels of the building’s outer belt. That is the location of the Chamber Hall (for three hundred listeners, twenty musicians and twenty choir members), a professional recording studio, rehearsal and practice rooms, dressing rooms, office rooms, and the remaining additional and technical spaces. Between the outer belt and the black block of the Grand Hall, the architect placed an atrium for the audience members. As he says: “this is the music lovers’ zone, a kind of a public square or a string of streets with a glass ceiling.” In here, people will be able to discuss a concert or use a network of footbridges, steps, and lifts to reach other parts of the building and the cafés, restaurants, or a music bookstore located there.
The modest, but nevertheless elegant and smart, form of the orchestra's headquarters is uncontroversial, corresponds with its surrounding, and contributes to the Culture Zone. The only shame, however, is that part of the building has been hidden behind concrete acoustic screens placed between the building and the multilane Roździeński Avenue. This is unfortunately what happens when a freeway runs through a city’s centre. The road, running inside of an trench, separates the newly created Culture Zone from the neighbouring university campus. If it wasn’t for the busy road, these two areas could be combined into one big cultural and academic quarter.
I know a lot of concert halls across the world that are effective, or even spectacular, visually, but don’t attract the audience. I hope that won’t be the case in Katowice, as one can feel the project’s embeddedness in its surrounding.
– Alexander Liebreich, one of the world's most celebrated conductors, said in an interview with the local edition of Gazeta Wyborcza .
Now, music lovers from around the world will have the opportunity to verify whether Tomasz Konior and his collaborators have managed to create an architecturally and technologically remarkable building.
Author: Anna Cymer, October 2014, transl. AM, February 2015