Auditorium – Parco della Musica



Renzo Piano

“The most fascinating adventure for an architect is that of constructing a concert hall. It might be even nicer for a violinmaker to make a violin; but (given all the differences there are in size and time) they are similar activities. Ultimately, the objective is always to make instruments that are made for playing or listening to music.
The sound is what rules. The harmonic chamber must vibrate with its frequencies and its energy.
I have often found myself in the adventure of constructing for music: From the Paris Institute of Acoustic and Musical Research with Pierre Boulez and Luciano Berio, to the Prometeo with Luigi Nono, from the Berlin Hall to the Potsdamer Platz, from the Lingotto di Torino Hall to the Niccolò Paganini Hall in Parma, and now the Roman Auditorium.
In all these projects, music has always been the focus of my attention: working with acoustics, working with musicians. The Roman Auditorium, however, is not simply an Auditorium, but a complete City of Music: with three halls, an open air amphitheatre, large rehearsal and recording rooms.
The Roman adventure, therefore, has been enriched by an important urban dimension: The Auditorium is not simply a musical establishment; there is also a square, Santa Cecilia, people who work there, there are shops, bars and restaurants.
All these activities add an additional dimension to the project: to give an urban sense to an area that needs urban participation.
Cultural locations, just like musical ones, have the natural ability of enriching the urban texture, stop the city’s barbarization and give back that extraordinary quality that it has always had in history. Musical instruments, therefore, are submerged in the Parco della Musica’s vegetation, which rolling down from Villa Glori, surrounds the Auditorium’s large lutes and two architectural gems such as the Flaminio Stadium and the Palazzetto dello Sport (Sport Palace) and ends up on Viale Tiziano. This gives the City of Rome a large twenty hectare Park inhabited by Music.”
Renzo Piano

L’Auditorium

The Auditorium Parco della Musica is a large multi-functional public music complex to the north of Rome — in the area where the 1960 Summer Olympic Games were held.

The Parco della Musica was designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano.[1] Three large concert halls (Sala Petrassi, in memory of Goffredo Petrassi, about 700 seats; Sala Sinopoli, in memory of Giuseppe Sinopoli, about 1200 seats; Sala Santa Cecilia, about 2800 seats) are structurally separated to ensure soundproofing, though joined at the base by a continuous lobby. A fourth “concert hall”, called Cavea, is the open air theater recalling ancient Greek and Roman theaters.[1] The fan-shaped layout is formed around the central piazza. The blobs, beetles, scarabs[1], turtles, insect carapaces, computer mice — all are names given to these structures with thin red Roman brick and weighty dramatic lead roofs.

During construction, excavations uncovered the foundations of a villa and oil press dating from sixth century BC. Renzo Piano redesigned the facility to accommodate the archaeological remains and included a small museum to house the artifacts that were discovered.