Recently completed was the Melbourne Recital Centre. Designed by Australian architects Ashton Raggatt McDougal (ARM) in collaboration with Arup Acoustics the building consists of five different halls. Each hall was designed using the shoe box shape that guarantees quality acoustic sound. Walls are lined with plywood panels, routed with a grain effect, giving the room character. The buildings exterior consists of tiles and glass created using geometric forms.

The design for the 1000 seat Melbourne Recital Centre and 500 seat MTC Theatre are co-located within Melbourne’s Southbank Arts Precinct. The two buildings have been designed to have separate but complimentary identities, together creating a distinctive new civic space. Performances at the centre will begin early next year.

The new drama theatre, which will be the permanent home for the Melbourne Theatre Company, is a 500 seat, single tier, proscenium arch theatre which includes a full fly tower and backstage accommodation for actors and technical staff.

Both buildings are state-of-the-art facilities incorporating the very latest in stage technology and performer amenity. They have been designed as neighbours in a vitalized street. The café and restaurant facilities in each, box office and performance activity with ancillary educational activities will make this a place that is active day and night. The design ensures that both theatre and recital hall are part of the street – this is not an arts fortress, but made of shopfronts, engaging with the passersby. They are civic buildings of the highest order, establishing the missing heart of the Southbank Arts Precinct in Melbourne.

The following information is from the Recital Centre’s website:

‘The design challenge was both aesthetic and technical. Post war halls, according to our listener reference group, have been mostly disappointing for players and audiences. It appeared that these were unsuccessful in both acoustic and architectural character. So our first task was to decide on the typological shape of the Hall, since this seemed to focus the history, culture and science of acoustic music performance. Was the new Hall to be a variation of the egg, the fan shape or some similar modernistic geometry? Would functional analysis, sightline diagrams, acoustic modelling, or neo-plastic expression, compulsorily generate the space? Or alternatively, would the shape of the Hall be something developed from traditional models such as the shoe-box? At the beginning of the project, recital venues such as Wigmore Hall (1900, Collcutt), Musicvereinsaal (1870, Hansen) and Concertgebouw (1883, van Gendt), were nominated as the benchmarks for Melbourne’s new Hall. These are the great centers of music performance in the world – but they are 19th century buildings. And in the case of the Viennese and Dutch halls, replete with lumpy luxury, gilded caryatids, friezes, dentils and coffers et al.

Already, in the architectural world, there are explorations into the new music space. Most of these new buildings have been concert halls- a type less restricted than the Recital Hall. Frank Gehry in Los Angeles and Rem Koolhaas in Porto have attempted such reinventions. We too searched for a meaningful architectural response to classical and acoustic music performance in the 21st century.

Surprisingly we began with the shoe-box- the shape that the experts say guarantees/predicts acoustic perfection. Once adopted, the formal issue becomes a non-battle. We escape the desperate attempt to deny the box. Instead, the resolution of the Hall becomes one of the creation of room-ness, a remarkable room of spectacle, surface and sound.

There is no proscenium, just a stage. The performers are in the same place as the audience. The traditional box has been nudged out of box-ness. The space is symmetrical like the old halls. But it is not planar, nor is it articulated by panels of textured surfaces and flying reflecting plates. It looks like a basic room but it is in reality, a complex space.

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall is lined with timber. Ply-wood panels are routed to create the grain, like wooden ivy over the walls, which in turn makes the architectural character of the space- like the back of a beautiful instrument, or the lining of a luxurious suite.’

In February 2009 Melbourne Recital Centre will hold two Open Days to coincide with the Opening Festival.

For further information visit: www.melbournerecital.com.au.