Dissonance Averted, Hamburg's New Philharmonic Hall on Track for Completion
The curtain wall consists of glass panels.
Photo by Peter Reina/ENR
The roof of the concert hall, the source of a structural controversy that affected both schedule and budget, towers above Elbe River.
Photo by Peter Reina/ENR
From its highest point, the hall's roof line descends in undulating, wave-like patterns.
Photo by Peter Reina/ENR
The deal allowed Hochtief 40 months to complete the project and set a new fixed price of $739 million, including about $45 million for design. The city puts its additional reorganization cost at $329 million, and Hochtief has written off losses of $108 million on the project, says a spokeswoman.
Elphilharmonie's tribulations could have been prevented had there been "willingness at the beginning to plan the building in its final form and only then to procure," said Mayor Scholz, when the new contacts were signed.
However, in the end, the project survived because the three people leading the last-ditch negotiations "understood each others' motives," says HdM's Lyons. "All they wanted was a good building."
