MUMUTH by UNStudio

MUMUTH, a new music theatre for the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG), was designed by UNStudio to be a building “that is as much about music as a building can be”. The theatre itself is a finely tuned acoustic machine-in-a-box, joined with the amorphous foyer half of the building by a spiral ‘spring structure’ – on which concrete and glass architectural elements hang “like laundry”, or like variations in pitch in a musical set.

These undelineated halves of the building form a ‘box’ and a ‘blob’ which flow into each other in smaller interconnected spirals, both encased in a transparent skin. Within that skin and its repetitive pattern, pockets of orthogonal order, of void, and wave-like curve forms create a Deleuzian high plateau of intensity, where the architecture is all about the music, its intervals, and a sonority that is only possible as the result of controlled repetition.

UNStudio’s aim with their design of MUMUTH was to celebrate the classical relationship between music and architecture, but ‘with a twist’. Those twists are what reflect most aptly the philosophy of the client university. Located in Graz, Austria, MUMUTH aims to be open to Eastern and Southeastern European musical influences, in the belief that music which breaks national boundaries can achieve higher intensities. The university also stresses a dialogue between science and the arts, and for that reason regards the music theatre not just as a performance, rehearsal, and multifunctional venue, but as a “research laboratory of the arts”.

Featured in the Venice Biennale, MUMUTH took 2 years to construct and about 10 years in total to realise. The irregular twists in the concrete spiral structure designed with Arup demanded such precision (and the use of self-compacting concrete pumped upwards into the formwork) that the architects state it was a greater technical challenge than the spiral ramps of their celebrated Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart.

The 450 seat auditorium is a veritable machine for listening. Electronic controls manipulate the basic acoustic features of the room, adjusting the venue for anything from a jazz band to a large scale orchestra. The topography of the auditorium can also be altered electronically, by controlling the 108 stage lifts which can bring parts of the stage up by 3 metres. The auditorium can easily be extended for effect with the removable ‘assembly bay’.

The black box that is the auditorium is what the architects describe as the ‘unit-based’ part of the project, which is complemented by the ‘movementbased’ curves of the foyer, or ‘blob’. Because the amorphous curves of the blob reflect structural pressures, they make minimal imposition on the interior, creating an open plan space and a condition not unlike experiencing the flow of music. The space is flexible and can be used as a performance space itself. A mobile ticketing desk can be placed under the staircase, and the student entrance area turned into a wardrobe, for the duration of a show.

In addition to its recording studios, the music theatre will also feature MUMUTH-Lab: a soon-tobe- installed addition to the facility which will house a 32-channel ‘loudspeaker dome’ which will produce three dimensional sound; and a motion sensor system which can track the movements of musicians and dancers, so that the information might be fed back into performances through light and sound control.

True to its mandate as a laboratory of the arts, MUMUTH manifests a taste for the experimental in architecture. Yet even in the contorted concrete of the foyer, a disciplined adherence to what is most conducive to musical intensity is apparent. Its formal expression is perhaps a true reflection of the oft uncelebrated marriage between science and music. +

1 With its undulating and rhythmic concrete forms, MUMUTH is the result of a union between architecture and music. 2 The dynamism of the foyer space is particularly apparent when lit at night, as the spirals within spirals of the 'blob' are exposed. 3 The foyer's central stairway, resting on the concrete spiral structure which melds into the next floor plate, brings visitors to the auditorium.

IMAGES courtesy of Christian Richters