Through an invited international competition in 2009, DRDH was awarded the design of a new Concert Hall and Theatre for the city of Bodø in northern Norway. The Concert Hall and Theatre is one of two principal buildings within the Cultural Quarter, alongside a City Library also designed by DRDH. Both buildings respond to the particularities of their context, situated between city and landscape, whilst maintaining a familial relationship that creates an urban ensemble. Externally, both façades display a trabeated construction of pre-cast concrete, with an aggregate of local white stone.
Forms rhyme between them. Roofs and towers speak to one another and the library establishes a horizon, across which the Concert Hall surveys the dramatic landscape of sea and mountains. The Concert Hall has three auditoriums compactly placed from east to west across the site. In the centre is the 920 seat main auditorium and the fly tower; with two smaller performance spaces situated below it, at lower ground level. The main auditorium offers a new typology that embodies the visual and acoustic qualities necessary for a concert hall, alongside the technical and performance characteristics of a theatre with proscenium for theatre, Opera and dance.
Supporting functions wrap around and over these performance spaces. A sequence of generously proportioned public rooms connect the auditoria around the two sides of the building that face onto the principal streets, while back-of-house facilities wrap around the opposing sides.