As popular base of tourists exploring the local area, Lucerne is equally rich in cultural and natural resources. Located next to the Vierwaldstattersee, Jean Nouvel’s new Cultural and Congress Center frames the spectacle of both these facets. Even before works commenced, the Lucerne Culture and Conference Center experienced a series of trouble: a winning competition submission, the project abandoned, then retrieved and modified, followed by a popular referendum.

It was meaningless challenge to provide a new concert hall, together with auditorium, conference facilities and a contemporary art museum for one of the most popular festivals in Europe. Once again, as in the case of Lyons Opera House, the Arab World Institute and the Cartier Foundation building, Nouvel enjoyed a stroke of sheer luck. In Walt Disney’s favorite city he disposed of an ideal site: a stone’s throw from the old wooden bridge, with the railway station and mountains as backdrop, the lakeside juts out in a slight promontory, turning the site into a natural proscenium.

In an initial design, Jean Nouvel had envisaged installing the main hall in a prow extending out over the lake. When this fell foul of planning regulations, he opted for a less ambitious nautical metaphor that of a boat-house, housing the various elements of the program under a spectacularly large cantilevered canopy, a ‘wing’, in the architect’s own lyrical description. There, the three auditoriums are carefully aligned, each a specific object: the large hall with its aubergine-colored wooden shell, the medium-size hall treated in metal-incrusted concrete, and the small hall clad in molded aluminium.

The dominant exterior feature is a vast cantilevered cooper-clad roof which underlines, rather than strikes through, the dramatic Alpine setting; its underside is softened with light reflected from the lake. In profile the roof is seen as a thin unbroken horizontal line. The space it covers forms a large and open a large and open sheltered area, protected from the elements but accessible even when the building is closed, and framing panoramic views like those also available from inside.

The Lucerne Cultural and Congress Center is organized simply and efficiently, accommodating musical performance facilities, a contemporary art museum, public foyers and service areas. The distinct volumes in which these activities are housed are ship-like forms which, together with lake-water channeled across the public plaza, recall the shipyard that previously occupied the site. The concert hall seats 1,840 and offers flexibility for various musical and other events. It is an isolated, sculptural element, which has the added benefit of acoustic separation. Jean Nouvel’s fondness for movement and transparency is satisfied through features such as a criss-crossing double stair which ascends from the foyer through four levels, and layers of extensive glazing.

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