Customer: DR, the Danish Broadcasting Corporation
Project Date: 2009
Few people are aware of the sheer volume of the calculations that were required to plan the Copenhagen Concert Hall (DR Koncerthuset).
It is something that the structural engineers from NIRAS who made the calculations will not forget in a hurry. The challenge was that French master architect Jean Nouvel had a vision of the concert hall as a meteor floating from outer space. It was calculated that the meteor would weigh 12,000 tons, and it was to balance on three stairwells and six slim columns.
Creating an overview of the many angles and curves included in Nouvel's plans for the ultimate concert experience was an extraordinary assignment and producing drawings for workshops and craftsmen to use was technically almost impossible.
The solution was provided by state-of-the-art IT technology which was applied to the complex calculations and used to visualise all of the details of the building in three-dimensional images. When Queen Margrethe inaugurated the concert hall in January 2009, the 400,000 equations with 400,000 unknowns required to complete the construction had been solved long ago, yet the results are still needed to make the meteor float and to allow the audience and the musicians to enjoy what it is all about: Music.
During 2009, the Copenhagen Concert Hall received eight awards, including the European Steel Design Award and British lifestyle magazine Wallpaper’s annual design award for "Best New Public Building".