Lucerne Culture and Congress Centre, Concert hall and museum building at Lake Lucerne, Switzerland.
The Lucerne Culture and Congress Centre, designed by Jean Nouvel, stands on Lake Lucerne under a flat roof measuring 100 by 100 metres. Two water channels cut the complex into three parts: the concert hall, the Luzerner Saal and the congress and museum wing. The concert hall seats an audience around a ship's-hull-shaped sound body with some 24,000 gypsum reliefs.
The foundation for a new concert hall was set up in 1988 under Walter von Moos, and publisher Alice Bucher gave the city 960,000 francs to fund an architecture competition. Jean Nouvel and Emmanuel Cattani won it in 1989, and after a referendum and a ground-breaking in January 1995, the concert hall opened on 18 August 1998. The full complex was inaugurated in March 2000 at a final cost of 226.5 million francs.
The concert hall hosts classical music performances, while the art museum shows contemporary exhibitions. Both spaces draw visitors interested in music and modern art.
The centre is located next to Lucerne's main railway station and is easy to reach on foot. The building has several restaurants and accessible facilities for visitors.
Jean Nouvel first planned the concert hall as a ship-shaped structure standing directly in Lake Lucerne, but urban and ecological objections stopped it. He then reversed the idea: water channels now lead into the building and the 100-by-100-metre roof reaches out over the water, splitting the complex into three ship-like sections.
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