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Text-only version of these pages for regular e-updates |
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 Click image to see larger view Facts and figures A rare and visionary gesture Construction Artworks Auditorium Organ Exterior Interiors |
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| Plant tower All the Hall's major services are routed through this extraordinary space, ensuring that neither their performance, maintenance or repair interferes with the acoustic isolation of the auditorium. On top of this, all the systems likely to generate noise or vibration - pumps, boilers, chillers and air-handling plant - are housed in a completely detached plant tower, again ensuring that no unwanted sound reaches the auditorium. This eight storey, concrete-framed structure is connected to the building by two massive air ducts and its curved glass facade exposes the technical systems contained within it, revealing its function for all to see. By night, however, it also reveals its other function - that of a 'Tower of Time'. As well as being a fundamental part of the Hall's acoustic design, the plant tower is also the building's most visible work of art, behaving as an abstract public clock. Lighting architect Jonathan Spiers has devised a scheme to creatively light the tower, using coloured light to paint it in changing colours that represent a hierarchy of different time intervals. A gradually changing wash of light depicts the season and lines of argon accentuate the five glazed levels, representing the days of the week from Monday to Friday. At weekends, specially programmed colour changes depict the Saturday night social whirl and on Sundays, the oasis of calm before the week begins again. |
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