Wiener Konzerthaus
The Vienna Concert Hall » deutsch
Vienna
2004-07
Opening: September 26th 2007
Upon completion of the restoration of the concert hall, the Wiener Konzerthaus was looking for an artistic lighting concept that would brilliantly complement the concert hall’s high-caliber programming while at the same time accommodate the new design of the Lothringerstraße. The endeavor was very well received by city officials.
“Music” and “light” are two phenomena that possess the same only seemingly contradictory characteristics: they are energetic and refined while at the same time transient and immaterial. The Light Space Wiener Konzerthaus succeeds in creating a sort of artistic analogy between the concerts held inside and the optical composition of the building’s exterior facade. In so doing, the interaction of the facade’s relief-like surface with color and light becomes the “prinicipal theme”. (» Index)
Finely modulated light colors blend on the surface of the facade to create a playful display shadowed in white. The “tone colors” change along the way: walking from the Schwarzenbergplatz to the Wiener Konzerthaus, a mixture of red, magenta, orange and yellow tones dominates. But, at the “other end”, at the entrance to the Stadtpark, facing the concert hall, a myriad of cooler tones on the green-blue end of the spectrum becomes visible. Standing directly across the street on the Lothringerstraße, various shades of white predominate on the building’s surfaces, and the architectural relief is replicated in sharp color contours. It is a new approach to aesthetic lighting—internationally one of a kind, based on the unique combination of the classic artistic medium of painting with innovative technology. (» Index)
The second active light space emerges on the sidewalk to the right and left of the marquise, specifically designed to involve passersby and visitors to the Wiener Konzerthaus in the work of lighting art. As soon as anyone enters the light space—the Chromotope—on the sidewalk, the light is activated. People cast multi-layered, ever-changing colored shadows on the pavement and actively “paint” in light with their bodies.
From moment to moment, and with each new movement, flitting kaleidoscopic images emerge on the sidewalk without influencing the geometric color contours on the building’s surface. The light space, the “Chromotope”, thus captures the textured contours of the architecture as well as the sidewalk and thus also the movement of people of all ages and all cultures. Over and over again, the outlines of images in motion appear on the sidewalk—ever new, ever changing. (» Index)
Team
Mock Up (M = 1 : 25)
LICHTFABRIK HALOTECH, Innsbruck
Wiener Konzerthaus
Heinz Repper, Technical Director
Jörg Jansen, Ass. Technical Director
Special thanks to the team of the
Municipal Department for Public Lighting, Vienna:
DI Susanne Lettner, Ing. Heinrich Hafner, Gerhard Dully
and Lorle Grant
Lighting Innovation, Vienna
Lumitech, Jennersdorf
Dr. Sztatecsny GmbH, Korneuburg (A)
for Prinz Optics, Stromberg (D)
Roscolab, London (UK)
© Victoria Coeln, 2004–07
