Designers should pay great attention to using culture and the arts to foster a sense of shared experience
– Malcolm Reading

Architecture competition organiser Malcolm Reading Consultants (MRC) has launched the one-stage race to find a designer for a new concert centre in Kaunas.

Practices from across the world have been invited to produce concept designs for “an emblematic new building of national and international significance”; the first of its kind in the Lithuanian city.

The Kaunas M.K. Ciurlionis Concert Centre – named in honour of an influential 20th century Lithuanian painter and composer – will be a landmark building of circa 11,750sq m (125,500sq ft) located on the south bank of the River Nemunas – close to the city’s heart, and with panoramic views of its Old and New Towns.

The brief calls for the complex to have a 1,500-seat Concert Hall of exceptional acoustic quality; a smaller, secondary hall; conferencing facilities; a restaurant, café and bar; back-of-house and office spaces; and underground parking.

The building must be able to host substantial public events, and provide a space for Kaunas’ growing business and academic communities to meet. It will sit within a public park, “signalling that this is a place for everyone.”

Its total allotted building cost is €30m (US$33.5m, £26.3m), including taxes. Construction is anticipated to begin in early 2019, with the new Concert Centre scheduled to open in time for Kaunas’ year as European Capital of Culture in 2022.

“This project has a number of compelling ingredients: a vibrant, developing city; a receptive and forward-thinking client; a population that values culture, design and the arts; and an ambitious brief that calls for the very best,” said MRC and jury chair Malcolm Reading.

“Designers should pay great attention to using culture and the arts to foster a sense of shared experience, as well as integrating different parts of the city, reviving adjacent neighbourhoods, and attracting citizens and visitors closer to the river.”

The mayor of Kaunas, Visvaldas Matijosaitis, said the venue would be “a genuine theatre of ideas”.

“Our new Concert Centre will be a beacon for music, culture and the arts; a symbol of Kaunas’ confidence and ambition; and an integral part of our city’s commercial and creative renaissance,” he added.

International architectural practices are invited to make anonymous submissions by 6 September 2017. The competition jury will then meet to assess the schemes

The jury will select three winners, each of whom will receive an honorarium of €25,000. The three will then enter into a negotiated procedure with Kaunas City Municipality, which will determine the partner it wishes to appoint for the project.

The competition follows the recent Science Island contest, also organised by MRC for the city, which became the most popular architectural competition in Lithuania’s history. Three studios are currently in contention for that project.

MRC is currently running competitions for the UK Holocaust Memorial in London, the Ross Pavilion in Edinburgh, and the Art Mill in Doha, Qatar.

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