Auditorium Oscar Niemeyer

Ravello asked for a concert hall and received a manifesto: Oscar Niemeyer's white concrete wave, drawn as a gift to the city and inaugurated in 2010, when the Brazilian architect was over one hundred. Above the Amalfi Coast, it remains his only public building in Italy and a purpose-built home for the town's musical life.

Why it matters

Ravello has traded on music since its medieval heyday, but for centuries its performances lived inside gardens and church squares. The Auditorium gave that vocation a permanent, purpose-built home, and it did so with a signature from the most famous curve-drawer of twentieth-century architecture. Niemeyer, co-planner of Brasília, had worked in Italy before on factories and an office tower, yet never for the public: Fondazione Ravello records this as the only public building by Niemeyer in the country, one of the last of a career that began in 1907 and ran past his hundredth birthday. For a hill town of stacked medieval palazzi, commissioning a modernist concrete shell was a deliberate act of confidence, and the result still reads as an argument between ancient stone and modern line.

What to notice

The auditorium follows the site's steep, irregular terrain; Niemeyer set the seating floor to follow the slope and enclosed it in a concave form that the municipality compares to a mandolin's soundbox. Roughly 400 seats rise in ten tiers, including four spaces for wheelchair users. Each seat is one of Niemeyer's "Ravello" armchairs, in shades of blue and grey. The semicircular stage platform, about 167 square metres, can rise hydraulically to the level of the plaza outside. A glass wall faces the sea.

Context and history

The project began in 2000, when the municipality asked Niemeyer for a venue worthy of Ravello's claim to be a city of music. The Fondazione's account describes the design as the architect's gift to the town; construction took the better part of a decade on a cliff-edge plot above Via della Repubblica, and the hall was inaugurated in January 2010. Niemeyer's written project notes dwell on his refusal of the straight angle in favour of what he called the free, sensual curve, and the building applies it without apology: a low curved wall cradles the stage, an entrance hall opens to the landscape, and an oblong plaza floats over underground parking. Since opening, the hall has been managed by the Comune di Ravello and has hosted concerts, cinema, conferences and theatre. It is also used by the Ravello Festival as an indoor venue.