Concert Hall, Culture and Congress Centre, Lucerne, Switzerland

The famed Concert Hall of Lucerne hosted its first public performance with the opening of the 1998 Lucerne International Music Festival. Situated on the picturesque Vierwaldstättersee shore, the facility is also known by the acronym of its German name, KKL (Kultur- und Kongresszentrum Luzern). It also contains a flexible performance and banquet space, the Lucerne Hall, as well as museum and exhibition space, meeting rooms, restaurants, and a rehearsal hall.

It is the home of the renowned Lucerne Music Festival, a five-week classical music festival, which draws many of the world's finest orchestras and soloists each summer. The Concert Hall's 1840 seats are distributed among its main floor and four balconies, thereby keeping the scale of the room visually and aurally intimate. The hall accommodates symphonic, choral, jazz, folk, and popular music, in addition to plenary conference sessions.

To accommodate a wide variety of events, the concert hall features a 7000 cubic meter acoustics control chamber around the perimeter of the hall. This is used in conjunction with heavy, sound-absorbing curtains that can be deployed in front of each wall surface to reduce the natural liveness of the hall for amplified events, and a two-piece, vertically moving acoustical canopy, above the performance platform,in order to adjust and the acoustical environment of the room to suit the performance.

Artec provided Design and Planning services covering Auditorium Acoustics Design and Background Noise and Vibration Control consulting for Culture and Congress Centre. The Architect for the facility was Jean Nouvel of Paris.