Frank Gehry's Latest Design Unites Arabs and Israelis Through Music

The Pierre Boulez Saal, a concert hall in Berlin designed by Pritzker Prize–winning architect Frank Gehry , will open this weekend with an inaugural concert that will be live-streamed throughout the world. Nowhere, perhaps, will the music be more relevant than in the Middle East, the same region the young musicians come from.

The new concert hall—which Gehry designed in collaboration with renowned acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota—will serve as an arm of the Barenboim-Said Akademie , a school that trains young musicians from the Middle East. The institute was created to mimic the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, an ensemble founded in 1999 by Daniel Barenboim and the late American-Palestinian scholar Edward Said. The duo put their time and energy into uniting Arabs and Israelis through music, a goal the Barenboim-Said Akademie will try to accomplish at its new concert hall.

The venue, which is just shy of 11,000 square feet, cost roughly $35.5 million to complete. The exterior includes more windows than typical concert venues, an approach that was meant to make the space feel like a unified part of urban life in Berlin.

The exterior of the building, which opens to the public this weekend.

But what really makes the design interesting is the close proximity in which each audience members is seated to the conductor. Of the 683 seats in the venue, the farthest seat is 46 feet away from center stage. This architectural feat is accomplished by positioning the upper levels in two oval-shaped, column-free, sloping balconies, which significantly shortens the distance to the stage.

For more information on upcoming performances at the newly minted concert hall, visit boulezsaal.de .