The Kölner Philharmonie is a symphonic concert hall located in

Cologne Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. It is part of the building ensemble of the

Museum Ludwig Museum Ludwig, located in Cologne, Germany, houses a collection of modern art. It includes works from Pop Art, Abstract and Surrealism, and has one of the largest Picasso collections in Europe. It holds many works by Andy Warhol and Roy Lic ...

and was opened in 1986. The Kölner Philharmonie is located close to the

Cologne Cathedral Cologne Cathedral (, , officially , English: Cathedral Church of Saint Peter) is a cathedral in Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia belonging to the Catholic Church. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Cologne and of the administration of the Archd ...

and the Cologne Main Station. The ensemble was designed by the architects Busmann + Haberer in the 1980s. Roughly 400 concerts are performed annually with approximately 600,000 visitors. The Kölner Philharmonie is the home base for the Gürzenich Orchester Köln and the

WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln The WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne (German: WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln) is a German radio orchestra based in Cologne, where the orchestra performs at two main concert halls: the WDR Funkhaus Wallrafplatz and the Kölner Philharmonie. History ...

Architecture

The concert hall

The concert hall was made like an

Amphitheatre An amphitheatre (American English, U.S. English: amphitheater) is an open-air venue used for entertainment, performances, and sports. The term derives from the ancient Greek ('), from ('), meaning "on both sides" or "around" and ('), meani ...

, to get a close to perfect room acoustic. Therefore, there are no walls which are in

parallel Parallel may refer to: Mathematics * Parallel (geometry), two lines in the Euclidean plane which never intersect * Parallel (operator), mathematical operation named after the composition of electrical resistance in parallel circuits Science a ...

to each other, to produce no echo. Size and art of the

padding Padding is thin cushioned material sometimes added to clothes. Padding may also be referred to as batting or wadding when used as a layer in lining quilts or as a packaging or stuffing material. When padding is used in clothes, it is often done in ...

for the seats (the seats were made by the German manufacturer Recaro, which is known for making car

ports Ports collections (or ports trees, or just ports) are the sets of makefiles and Patch (Unix), patches provided by the BSD-based operating systems, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, as a simple method of installing software or creating binary packages. T ...

seats) is selected in a way, that the

acoustic quieting Acoustic quieting is the process of making machinery quieter by damping vibrations to prevent them from reaching an observer. Machinery vibrates, causing sound waves in air, hydroacoustic waves in water, and mechanical stresses in solid matter. ...

is constant, independently of the fact if the seat is used by a person or not.

Roof

The hall has no

column A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression member ...

s in it and has place for 2,000 people. The size of the hall gives some problems: The hall is below the public Heinrich-Böll square. Walking noise from people with

stiletto heel A stiletto heel, or just stiletto, is a shoe with a long, thin, high heel. It is named after the stiletto dagger. Stiletto heels may vary in length from 2.5 centimetres (1 inch) to 25 cm (10 inches) or more if a platform s ...

s or driving noise from

skateboard A skateboard is a type of sports equipment used for skateboarding. It is usually made of a specially designed 7–8-ply maple plywood deck and has polyurethane wheels attached to the underside by a pair of skateboarding trucks. The skateboard ...

s or trolleys can be heard in the hall. Due to this reason, the town square is closed during performance.

Pipe organ

At the original design of the hall, no

pipe organ The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurised air (called ''wind'') through the organ pipes selected from a Musical keyboard, keyboard. Because each pipe produces a single tone and pitch, the pipes are provide ...

was planned. Later, the pipe organ building company

Klais Orgelbau Orgelbau Klais is a German firm that designs, builds and restores pipe organs. It is a family run company, founded in 1882 by Johannes Klais senior and is now run by his great-grandson Philipp Klais. The firm is based in Bonn, Germany, and has ...

from

Bonn Bonn () is a federal city in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, located on the banks of the Rhine. With a population exceeding 300,000, it lies about south-southeast of Cologne, in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr region. This ...

, got the contract to build an organ. The original instrument was finished in 1986. The original instrument had three keyboards, 70 stops with altogether 5.394

pipes Pipe(s), PIPE(S) or piping may refer to: Objects * Pipe (fluid conveyance), a hollow cylinder following certain dimension rules ** Piping, the use of pipes in industry * Smoking pipe ** Tobacco pipe * Half-pipe and quarter pipe, semi-circu ...

North-South-Tunnel of the Stadtbahn

Currently the North-South-Tunnel of the

Cologne Stadtbahn The Cologne Stadtbahn is a light rail system in the German city of Cologne, including several surrounding cities of the Cologne Bonn Region (Bergisch Gladbach, Bonn, Bornheim, Brühl, Frechen, Hürth, Leverkusen-Schlebusch, Wesseling). The te ...

is under construction. The Tunnel is below the concert hall. In 2009 first acoustic tests have been performed. According to the Intendant Louwrens Langevoort, these tests have not been performed well.

References

External links

* {{Coord, 50.9406, 6.9608, type:landmark_region:DE, display=title, format=dms Buildings and structures in Cologne Concert halls in Germany 1986 establishments in West Germany Music venues completed in 1986 Music in Cologne Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne WDR Funkhausorchester