Gold Architecture, Building and Structure Design · 2021
Fondazione Bertarelli Concert Hall
by Edoardo Milesi - Archos srl
- A' Design Award 2021 Gold Winner in Architecture, Building and Structure Design
- Awarded April 15, 2021
- CLIENT: Edoardo Milesi - Archos srl
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 28,440
- Verification code 83680D0DDF · Verify this award
About Fondazione Bertarelli Concert Hall
Forum Fondazione Bertarelli is a concert hall for 350 people on the slopes of Mount Amiata in the Tuscan Maremma, Italy. The hall has an organic shape based on golden proportions, so sound is amplified by the form and by natural materials instead of mechanical systems. The main structure is coloured reinforced concrete, covered with insulating materials and bricks, while curved oxidised steel plates guide visitors towards the foyer. The building stands within an olive grove and replaces an earlier plan for nine residential buildings on the same site.
Positioned within the evolving discourse of contemporary cultural architecture that seeks dialogue between built form and natural landscape, this concert hall by Edoardo Milesi represents a distinguished contribution to the tradition of expressive tectonics in service of communal gathering and artistic celebration. The architect appears to engage deeply with material phenomenology, selecting corten steel for its capacity to register the passage of time through oxidation while offering warm chromatic resonance with surrounding earth tones and seasonal vegetation. The sweeping curvilinear envelope suggests influences from both organic modernism and the lyrical structural expressionism associated with performance venue design, where acoustic requirements often inspire inventive formal solutions. The composition achieves remarkable equipoise between horizontal repose and dynamic gesture, the extended arc simultaneously embracing the landscape and creating a sense of protective enclosure for activities within. Technical accomplishment manifests in the seamless integration of curved metal surfaces with the colonnade system, where slender supports establish rhythmic cadence while maintaining visual permeability between interior and exterior realms. The twilight documentation captures the building at a particularly evocative moment when artificial illumination activates the entrance zone with warm invitation while the cooling sky enhances the material warmth of the steel envelope. One observes careful attention to site relationships, with the structure settled into gentle topography rather than imposed upon it, while preserved mature trees provide seasonal counterpoint and establish the venue within a living landscape that will continue evolving alongside the architecture. The circular rotunda element visible at right suggests programmatic differentiation, perhaps serving acoustic or ceremonial functions distinct from the main hall volume. Viewers might contemplate how architectural form shapes our experience of gathering, how material choice communicates values of permanence and natural process, and how cultural buildings serve as physical manifestations of community aspiration toward beauty and shared artistic experience.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- The building, which will be built up from nothing, will be given an organic and perfect form by using golden proportions suitable for improving the acoustics, in order to avoid it from being too rigid, which would not make it fit in the environment created by the light and the patterns created by the wind.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- The main structure consisting of an underground part at a height of - 4.68 meters with a square and plant roof where the changing rooms and services are located;
the ovoid-shaped part of the central theatre from a height of - 4.68 to a height of 0.00 with the relative terraces, the stage and backstage, the side stairways, the entrance and, on the upper floor, height + 2.70, the director's mezzanine. The roof structure, up to an altitude of + 5.60 above ground.
The Forum has an overall volume of 7,813.34 cubic meters. - Tags
- Forum Bertarelli, Bertarelli Concert Hall, Edoardo Milesi, Studio Archos
- Production Technology
- A single building consisting of two parts forming a single shape generated by a geometry inspired by the golden section: theatre and multipurpose hall. The main structure is coloured reinforced concrete, soundproofed, insulated and covered with insulating materials and bricks; gypsum plaster; flooring partly in parquet for the theatre, partly in Gress for the logistic parts and partly in industrial concrete for the technical parts; aluminum windows with thermal break, wooden communication doors and partitioning doors. The roof structure it is made of steel with double lens reticular beams; wooden roof structure and relative metal mantle; the wooden false ceiling. Foyer and distribution spaces located on the ground floor level consists of a CORTEN-type steel structure, with spaced portals. It has a roof with a wooden structure and a soundproofed and insulated metal mantle; internal plasterboard false ceiling; perimeter infill (service area only) in plastered brick; steel frames to protect the structures. The noble stone floors, both in the foyer area and in the cloakroom, toilet and office area. External areas: a blade consisting of a CORTEN steel metal structure guides the population from the approach area to the foyer area; the floors provided are in stone, a covered area with glazing outside the foyer is the refreshment area and stone and quarry stabilised paths will connect the theatre / foyer area to the parking area, suitably illuminated and still in the executive design phase.
- Design Challenge
- This is the task of the theatre designed for the Bertarelli Foundation on top of a hill in the Maremma. A concert hall for 350 people. From the sky it looks like a large olive still attached to its nearest leaf. I had never thought of such a result, although the concern of not harming the large olive grove that will host it has always been present.
- Project Duration
- The project started in June 2010 in Bergamo and finished in June 2013. The construction works have begun in June 2013 and finished in November 2014 in Poggi del Sasso, Grosseto, Italy
- Operation Flow
- A concert hall for 350 people, where amplification takes place exclusively thanks to the shape generated by golden proportions and natural materials. Surrounded only by nature on the slopes of Mount Amiata, it providentially replaces a subdivision plan which, in that very place, provided for a complex of nine residential buildings inspired, according to an unfortunately widespread practice, by mimicry and falsification of traditional buildings.
- Research
- The Forum Fondazione Bertarelli originates from a thorough study of the settlement models in the inland of the Maremma plains. This 300-seat concert hall has an organic shape, perfectly self-contained and within the golden ratio, whose proportions were designed for non-mechanical acoustic amplification. From a distance as well as from close range, the Forum is not perceived as a building. Being free of openings, its rugged concrete surface with the earth tones of cement is reminiscent of a mound and fortified by wavy oxidised iron plate, which it partially envelops. Going uphill through an olive grove along the iron wall supporting the volume of the hall, we enter the foyer, one dematerialised space flooded by light where the outside landscape is again visible through a glass wall. The music hall can be seen with a single glance from above with the unique surface of the drum-shaped element on which rests the curved wings of the roof that laterally embrace the galleries and conceal the links to the various levels. From the sky, it looks like a big olive still attached to a leaf. The building is in the right position with respect to the views, the height of the pines, and the correct structural attitude on the current ground level, which should not be changed at all. The rain was pouring down and I attended a different concert. The orchestra didn't care about me when I got in the way among the musicians.
The curved iron plate next to the theatre on the sunset side, reminiscent of those used by Richard Serra, leads visitors inside and gradually takes them away from the outside sights, sounds and smells. It marks the limits of the olive grove that stretches to the large pines and it supports the slender iron plate structure, which, like a harp, lets visitors in to the concert. - Inspiration
- The architecture of the concert hall, shaped according to its rational and poetic function, the task of letting instruments play, and the desire to convey emotions, listens and participates without disturbing; it is part of the orchestra and plays its role as a new musical instrument which improves the acoustics of the place. Aesthetic values are not perceived as added, they are part of the building and radiate from it.
- Image Credits
- Image #1, Photographer Mauro Davoli, 2015
Image #2, Photographer Mauro Davoli, 2015
Image #3, Photographer Mauro Davoli, 2015
Image #4, Photographer Mauro Davoli, 2015
Image #5, Photographer Mauro Davoli, 2015 - Patents
- Copyrights belong to Edoardo Milesi & Archos, 2015
Colors of Fondazione Bertarelli Concert Hall
Get Fondazione Bertarelli Concert Hall
Award-Winning Architectural Design Services
We create architecture that harmonizes with landscape and enhances human experience. With over four decades of expertise, our studio designs spaces that balance aesthetic excellence, environmental sensitivity, and social purpose. Winner of prestigious international awards.
G0E23 Shop