Client: Kaunas Municipality, Lithuania
Sector: Culture
Area: NA
Value: €25m
Status: Competition
A concert hall complex located on the bank of the Nemunas River, Kaunas, a site of great natural beauty, home to significant wildlife and much loved by the local people.
The presence and importance of Nature is a key influence for the design as is the openness of the design, which signifies the democratic nature of the building and its accessibility to all.. Generous terraces and public areas wrap around two brick-clad auditoriums that house a 1500 seat hall and 700 seat flexible auditorium. Our building is read as a clearly manmade intervention: A series of strata, rising out of the established natural landscape.
The building’s open, welcoming and informal composition reflects the confidence of Lithuania’s democratic age, the antithesis of the more formal civic buildings, born out of past generations, that sit across the river. It celebrates the new Lithuania.