'Today, when all urban concert halls aspire to be iconic landmarks, it's easy to forget that they used to be designed quite differently.'

摘要

The Philharmonie de Paris, a new concert hall designed by Jean Nouvel, hon. faia, opened last year. While the construction was costly and the remote location at the northeastern edge of the city remains controversial, the hall has received plaudits for its musical ambience. "From first impressions it seems acoustically marvelous," wrote Anthony Tommasini of the New York times. Alex Ross of the New Yorker found the sound to be "rather wonderful," although he characterized the building itself as a "menacing presence." The Guardians architecture critic, Oliver Wainwright, went further and described the exterior as "a tyrannical hulk of a thing." Tyrannical or not, a concert hall conceived as a "thing"-a freestanding object-is pretty much par for the course these days.