The New World Center concert hall has helped usher in a new development model, turning the traditional concert hall — with its orderly rows and grand décor — inside out. Establishing new connections among architecture, technology, education, and culture, the Frank Gehry-designed glass-and-steel box contains the free-flowing theater space, while the front facade doubles as a 7,000-square-foot (650-m²) projection wall, displaying concerts and video art to patrons in an adjacent 2.5-acre (one-ha) urban park. Known as the Miami Beach Soundscape, this outdoor venue brings classical music and performance to an audience beyond the formal environs of most symphony halls.
The Petit Palau respectfully expands Barcelona’s Palau de la Música Catalana—a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the best preserved and most used art nouveau buildings in the world, as well as one of the world’s leading concert halls—with a new service building and underground performance space. The expansion exposes the original Palau structure on all sides as had been originally intended. The new 538-seat auditorium contains state-of-the-art features that could not be retrofitted into the Palau’s main concert hall. The small—only 2,100 square meters (22,600 sf)—site on which the building was constructed between 1905 and 1908 posed numerous challenges to its execution. Architects Oscar Tusquets and Carles Díaz worked on this and previous Palau projects for more than two decades, accomplishing a major renovation and expansion effort that addressed numerous challenges while honoring architect Lluís Domènech i Muntaner’s original vision for the Palau.
