Projects/Case Studies

test image description.The Sage Gateshead

The Sage Gateshead was designed by no less eminent a personality than London-based architect Norman Foster. What is remarkable is how a building project of this magnitude ever got off the ground: The National Lottery Trust funded the lion's share of the 70 million pound building project. The architects worked in cooperation with engineers and specialists from every field of technology, including Buros Arup, Mott, Howe Ltd, McDonald and Happold to name just a few. Foster and Partners had joined forces with them before to complete renowned projects such as the Millennium Dome (Buro Happold) or Swiss Re (Arup) in London.

The Sage Gateshead has undoubtedly caught some of the "Bilbao Effect", integral as it is to the structural urban redevelopment of the Gateshead quays: a region which for many years bore the unmistakable stamp of coal and steel manufacture. Together with the neighbouring Baltic Flour Mills complex, now a centre for contemporary art, it fills a yawning and long-standing cultural void. The regeneration plans were ten years in the making. Opened in December 2004, the new music centre now stands confident among buildings of a no less spectacular calibre:

Only a few hundred metres downstream is the Gateshead Millennium Bridge by London-based Wilkinson Eyre Architects, id around the same distance away upstream stands the historical Tyne Bridge. Foster was aiming to create a new landmark with this new building - and as the international interest the building and the program has attracted clearly testify, in this he is certainly succeeded.

The centre is home to various different orchestras and formations right across the various genres of classic, folk, hip-hop and jazz. Courses are held for beginners and professionals. The technological equipment and appointments of the total of three concert halls can only be described as state-of-the-art. To protect the three building volumes from the effects the relentless Tyneside and the whole structure is encased by the monumental roof construction.

There is seating room for 1650 in the largest of the three halls; the second smaller auditorium located at the Easterly exit is used predominantly for folk, jazz and chamber concerts. Here, the seating is flexible and sufficient for 400 concert-goers. The third

hall nestles between the two others and is a joint rehearsal room. It is normally used for rehearsal by the Northern Sinfonia, the local Gateshead Orchestra and the jazz and folk formations belonging to the Folkworks organisation.

Depending on the weather conditions, it is possible to see the sky and the water of the river reflected in the facade of the Sage Gateshead from the outside. Inside, the space is given over to instrument-bearing musicians and guests all hurrying busily through. Where are they going? To a concert, a rehearsal, or to attend a lesson in one of the 25 rooms of the Regional Music School? Like the concert halls, they are located in the three large white plastered separate building volumes. Or perhaps they are en route for a bite at the restaurant or cafe in the main concourse? The reception staff will have pointed out the way.

The Sage Gateshead is a place of inspiration and a centre of leisure: Different sounds combine in this wide, open space. In contrast, the white plastered buildings create a distinctive space continuum whose closed, partially cubic, partially rounded surfaces echo the facades of the ships gliding by outside.