Kaunas City Municipality and Malcolm Reading consultants have announced three finalists in the competition for the new €30m landmark music venue

The open international contest for a new concert venue in Lithuania attracted 117 entries from 36 countries. At a press conference in Kaunas, the names of the participants were announced in ranking order, with the three finalists revealed as Lithuanian-based UAB Paleko Archstudija and UAB Baltic Engineers, together with two firms from the United Kingdom, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios and Adam Khan Architects.

The venue will be named in honour of Lithuanian artist and composer Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis. Competition director Malcolm Reading said, “Čiurlionis was a polymath with the eye of an artist and the ear of a musician. The jury set out to find architects who in fulfilling the city’s brief could do justice to his creative legacy and create a memorable new cultural venue.”

The regenerative project to build a new world class concert hall will revitalise a central area close to the historic Old Town. Kaunas is becoming increasingly known as one of the Baltics’ key knowledge and cultural hubs. However, Lithuania lacks a first-rank concert hall able to host leading orchestras and ensembles. Jonas Audėjaitis, Kaunas Faculty Dean at the Vilnius Academy of Arts, Member of Kaunas City Council and competition juror, said: “Kaunas is experiencing rapid change as it seeks to fulfil its potential in the 21st century. We want the Concert Centre to be an exemplary civic building that enriches Kaunas cultural life but also re-shapes the city – moving its epicentre closer to the river.”

Gifted with a prominent site on the south bank of the River Nemunas, the Centre will include a 1,500-seat Concert Hall of exceptional acoustic quality, a smaller, secondary hall, conferencing facilities, a restaurant, café and bar, together with back-of-house and office spaces and underground parking. With Kaunas set to become a UNESCO Site for Modernist Architecture, the architectural quality and contribution to the cityscape were essential criteria used to assess the submitted designs.

The three finalists will now undergo a Negotiated Procedure without Publication of a Contract Notice with Kaunas City Municipality, who will select one architect or team to take the concept through to completion. The Concert Centre is due to open by 2022, Kaunas’ year as European Capital of Culture.
 
Lucy Nordberg
TenderStream Research Specialist & Editor
 
This project was first published by TenderStream on 23.06.2017. See the original brief here.

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