 Glór
Music Centre:
1999 - 2001 / Project Cost €6.8m. / Project Size 2,450 sq.m.
Glór is Ireland’s national venue for folk music. Capacity
varies from five hundred and in degrees of flexibility to equally accommodate
the smaller gig.
The centre’s location in Ennis, Co. Clare, anchors it particularly
to the Irish tradition. That immediately puts the emphasis on the informal
rather than the formal, on spontaneity, ease of access and on the erosion
of the boundaries between the music maker and the listener. In contrast
there is an equally serious formal requirement. It is a national institute.
It includes a major auditorium and all the associated sophisticated technology
and standards of acoustic performance. The juxtaposition of spaces and
their architectural expression is about encapsulating those two differing
body languages and reconciling their somewhat opposing requirements..
Its architectural form is generated primarily by these unique spatial
requirements. The architectural challenge was not merely to design a building
in which music could be played but to create an architectural piece ,
which was in itself an instrument of music.
The building organisation synthesises these contrasts around a central
undulating hall. Tall airy and awash with light, this hall is the spine
of the building. Off the spine are the intimately scaled interconnecting
social spaces finished in warm colours and furnishings for the impromptu.
Opposite are the auditorium and stage back-up furnished and finished to
more structured geometries for formal activity.
The auditorium is shaped for both acoustic efficiency and to allow comfortable
eye contact between performance and audience. The hall accommodates a
smaller more intimate auditorium, a restaurant bar , retail space and
on the balcony mezzanine at first floor an exhibition space. Many varied
types of activity will take place here. Flexibility in use is of the essence.
Auditorium seating can be adopted in a series of modes for the quite differing
requirements of music, drama and dance.
The building is designed to be as comfortable for a small group on a
January evening as for an over-spill capacity on an August holiday. The
resolution of opposites internally is manifest in external shape and materials.
The clear geometric forms of auditorium and flytower rise up from the
less determinate ones below in a cranked composition expressing inner
function and simultaneously disguising bulk. This is reinforced by the
juxtaposition of steel and glass with more organic materials including
local stone, found on site, all of which contributes to the central metaphor
of an unfolding music box.
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