PHILHARMONIE

The Philharmonie de Paris, an association supported by the French State and the City of Paris, is undertaking the construction of a complex for the performance of music centred on a major concert auditorium with a capacity of some 2,400 seats in the Parc de la Villette, in the north-east district of Paris.

The inception of the project for the future grand auditorium for the City of Paris goes back to 2002.

From June 21 to July 31, then from September 1 to 30 2007 the Cité de la Musique in Paris staged an exhibition of the six projects presented for the international design competition for the construction for the Philharmonie de Paris. This gave the public the opportunity to see models and supporting videos showing the proposals by Jean Nouvel, Zaha Hadid, Coop Himmelb(l)au, MVRDV, Francis Soler and Christian de Portzamparc.

  Concert music was for long performed in the open air, in churches, palaces or theatres. As from the XVIIIth century, the first purpose-built concert halls began to appear in places like Oxford, London, Hanover and Leipzig. Then, in the XIXth century, as concerts for a paying audience became increasingly popular, numerous cities began to commission more capacious concert halls whose architecture was based on the rectangular layout of salons and protestant temples. This produced the first basic design, sometimes known as the shoebox in which the orchestra faces the public. The musicians had a head-on relationship with the audience.