"The great problem of the concert hall is that the shoebox is the ideal shape for acoustics but that no architect worth their names wants to build a shoebox"
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Koolhaas is doing that very Koolhaas thing: praising a blunt, almost embarrassing truth while indicting the culture that can’t tolerate it. The shoebox - plain, efficient, a little dull - happens to be one of the best acoustic geometries for orchestral sound. It’s a shape discovered less by genius than by accumulated trial, the slow consensus of physics and ears. His barb lands because it names the awkward gap between what works and what wins awards.
The “great problem” isn’t acoustics; it’s prestige. Concert halls are civic monuments now, expected to photograph well, brand a city, and justify philanthropic capital. “No architect worth their names” isn’t really about competence, it’s about the economy of signature: architects are incentivized to produce novelty, not to disappear behind proven typologies. A shoebox feels like anonymity, like admitting the most important innovation happened a century ago. In a profession trained to treat constraint as a prompt for invention, the best answer being “repeat the boring rectangle” reads as surrender.
Context matters: by the late 20th and early 21st century, “vineyard” seating and sculptural interiors promised democratic sightlines and iconic form, sometimes at the cost of acoustic predictability. Koolhaas isn’t anti-experiment; he’s skeptical of spectacle masquerading as progress. The line doubles as a critique of cultural institutions that commission architecture as image management while hiring acousticians to clean up the consequences. It’s funny because it’s true, and it stings because it implicates everyone in the room.
The “great problem” isn’t acoustics; it’s prestige. Concert halls are civic monuments now, expected to photograph well, brand a city, and justify philanthropic capital. “No architect worth their names” isn’t really about competence, it’s about the economy of signature: architects are incentivized to produce novelty, not to disappear behind proven typologies. A shoebox feels like anonymity, like admitting the most important innovation happened a century ago. In a profession trained to treat constraint as a prompt for invention, the best answer being “repeat the boring rectangle” reads as surrender.
Context matters: by the late 20th and early 21st century, “vineyard” seating and sculptural interiors promised democratic sightlines and iconic form, sometimes at the cost of acoustic predictability. Koolhaas isn’t anti-experiment; he’s skeptical of spectacle masquerading as progress. The line doubles as a critique of cultural institutions that commission architecture as image management while hiring acousticians to clean up the consequences. It’s funny because it’s true, and it stings because it implicates everyone in the room.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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