Elbphilharmonie Case Study: Hall on a Warehouse, Skin and Cost (Herzog & de Meuron)

The Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg is a concert hall built on top of a 1960s brick warehouse, Kaispeicher A, at the western tip of the city's HafenCity district. Herzog & de Meuron kept the warehouse walls, gutted the inside, made its roof a public plaza 37 m above the ground, and set a glass building with two concert halls, a hotel and flats above it. It opened on 11 January 2017, about seven years late and many times over its first budget. Below, in the order a studio jury expects, with notes where sources disagree.

The brief and the client

The idea did not start with the city. According to the Elbphilharmonie's own history, the developer Alexander Gérard commissioned Herzog & de Meuron in 2003 to design a concert hall on the old Kaispeicher A, which had stood empty since the 1990s. Herzog & de Meuron date their concept phase from 2001 to 2003, so the start differs between the two accounts.

The Hertie School fact sheet by Jobst Fiedler and Sascha Schuster (May 2015) describes the brief: a concert hall on the warehouse, wrapped in a commercial shell of hotel, flats and car park. The City of Hamburg became the client. Herzog & de Meuron put the reason for the mix plainly, in a statement quoted by Permasteelisa Group: to make the hall "a genuinely public attraction", it needed "an attractive mix of urban uses".

Site and context

The site is the tip of a quay, the Kaiserhöft, with the Elbe on one side and the new HafenCity district behind. The Kaiserspeicher of 1875 stood here until, badly damaged, it was blown up; Kaispeicher A replaced it to store cocoa, tea and tobacco (Elbphilharmonie: the building). Structurae gives its construction as 1963 to 1966 to Werner Kallmorgen's design; the Elbphilharmonie gives 1966 and Nagata Acoustics 1963, which match Structurae's end and start years.

The ground is river silt, so the warehouse stands on piles. The Elbphilharmonie says the 1,111 existing piles anchor the building in the Elbe, and Herzog & de Meuron say the foundations of the gutted warehouse were reinforced to carry a new building of about 200,000 tonnes.

Elbphilharmonie design concept: a hall on a warehouse

The concept is two buildings stacked, each left to look like itself. Herzog & de Meuron describe the "elemental" brick warehouse below and a glass volume above that turns into "a gigantic, iridescent crystal". Between them sits the plaza, which the architects call "a gigantic hinge between old and new": a public floor laid across the warehouse roof, open to anyone, from which the foyers of the halls, the hotel lobby and the bars are reached.

The third idea is the roof, "designed as a fifth facade" because the building is seen from above and from all sides. It has eight concave sections rising in a wave, at up to 57 degrees, topped by 6,000 white perforated sequins (Elbphilharmonie). The Grand Hall pushes up into that roof "almost like a tent", in the architects' words.

Elbphilharmonie floor plan and zoning

The building is zoned in layers, and the section explains it better than any single floor plan.

• The warehouse (base): only the outer walls were kept. Inside are the car park, the Kaistudios for music education, and the Tube, an 82 m curved escalator that rises through the brick block to a panorama window on the sixth floor, from where a second escalator reaches the Plaza on the eighth (Elbphilharmonie: Plaza).
• The Plaza (hinge): about 4,000 m², with a walkway around the whole building, according to Permasteelisa. Here are restaurants and bars, the ticket office, a shop and the hotel lobby; outside, two curved glass wind deflectors open towards the city and the harbour.
• The glass volume (above): the hotel in the east section, flats in the western tip, and the two halls in between. Herzog & de Meuron describe the halls as sitting between the flats and the hotel, with the Grand Hall as the centrepiece.

Sources disagree on counts: 244 hotel rooms (Elbphilharmonie) or 250 (Permasteelisa); 44 or 45 flats (two Elbphilharmonie pages); a Plaza at 37 m or 30 m (Dezeen); and a height of 110 m or 108 m at the Kaispitze, the western tip (both from Herzog & de Meuron).

Our section is schematic. The real drawings are on the Herzog & de Meuron project page, and a plan and section of the Grand Hall are printed on the Nagata Acoustics data sheet. To turn those into case-study sheets of your own, see our guide to documenting a building for a case study.

Section and structure

Structurally, this is a new building of about 200,000 tonnes standing in and on an old one. The warehouse floors were removed, the old piles were kept, and the foundations were strengthened (Herzog & de Meuron). The Elbphilharmonie's timeline puts the gutting and foundations in 2008, and the 25th and final floor and the start of the facade in 2010. Herzog & de Meuron list 29 levels; we found no source that reconciles the two counts.

The Grand Hall is built as a box in a box. According to the Elbphilharmonie's page on acoustics, its inner wall is not connected to the outer reinforced-concrete wall and rests on large groups of springs: 362 under the Grand Hall and 56 under the Recital Hall. That keeps the noise of a working port, a hotel and flats out of the halls.

Elbphilharmonie acoustics: the vineyard hall and the white skin

The Grand Hall seats 2,100 in a "vineyard" layout: seats rise in terraces around the stage, and the Elbphilharmonie says none of them is more than 30 m from the conductor. Dezeen gave 2,150 seats; the Elbphilharmonie and Nagata give 2,100.

The Nagata Acoustics data sheet explains the thinking. When Nagata joined, the shape was already decided as vineyard rather than shoebox, to seat people close to the stage. Its keyword was "intimacy": seats are split into small groups, each with its own sound-reflecting walls. Nagata lists a room volume of 23,000 m³, a reverberation time (T30) of 2.4 seconds empty and 2.3 seconds occupied, and a Klais organ with four manuals and 65 stops.

Those walls and the ceiling are the "white skin": more than 10,000 panels individually milled from gypsum fibre (Elbphilharmonie), listed by Nagata as high-density gypsum fibreboard of 125 kg/m². Flat areas reflect sound, and areas with deep indentations scatter it. Nagata says the seashell-like "micro-shaping" also removes long-path echoes, and its depth in each part of the room was set by tests on a 1:10 model.

The Recital Hall is a shoebox for up to 550, lined in waves of French oak (Elbphilharmonie).

Materials and construction: the Elbphilharmonie facade and glass

The upper facade is the part most students come to study. Permasteelisa Group's Façade in Focus gives the numbers:

• Units: 1,100 prefabricated units on a standard module of 4.3 × 3.35 m, about 1,500 kg each. The envelope is 21,800 m² (Permasteelisa) or 22,500 m² (Herzog & de Meuron).
• Glass: double-skin, extra-clear, low-iron safety glass, with reflective chrome-like dots, grey circular screen printing, a solar control coating and a low-e layer. The print density changes from unit to unit with the room behind.
• Curves: 600 of the 2,200 panes are spherically curved, bending in or out by up to 350 mm. About 300 units have a "porthole", an oval window that pivots to ventilate the room.
• Special elements: over 100 "tuning fork" loggias for the flats, cut into the glass with curved balustrades, and 28 S-shaped curved glass windbreaks, up to 6 m high, at access points.
• Making it: a bespoke furnace, a test rig at Gartner's headquarters because no institute could certify the curved units, and an RFID chip in every panel.

On the west and south faces, glass thickness and dots were adjusted to avoid interfering with ship radar (Permasteelisa). The last of the 1,100 glass elements went on on 31 January 2014 (Elbphilharmonie).

Light, climate and services

The facade does most of the climate work: printed dots and coatings cut solar gain, portholes ventilate rooms, and curved glass walls shelter the Plaza from the wind at 37 m (Permasteelisa). Transsolar were the climate consultants from 2005 to 2013, and Taubert und Ruhe advised on noise control (Herzog & de Meuron credits). We found no published energy figures for the building in use.

Elbphilharmonie cost and delay: what went wrong

• The first promise: the taxpayer share was first projected at 77 million euros, as reported by Dezeen (Amy Frearson) and the DPA news agency in The Local, both on 1 November 2016.
• Total project cost (Hertie School, from the parliamentary inquiry report and the 2013 agreement): 351.8 million euros at the 2006 contract, 560.8 million after a 2008 supplement, and 865 million under the 2013 new agreement, a rise of 146 per cent.
• Cost to the city: 789 million euros, as reported by Dezeen and DPA in 2016 and printed on Nagata's data sheet. The Hertie total of 865 million includes ancillary costs (planners, project company, fees and taxes); we did not find a source that reconciles the two figures line by line.
• Time: the opening was planned for 2010 and happened in January 2017, a 200 per cent overrun on construction time by the Hertie School's count. Construction stalled for almost two years before the 2013 agreement, according to Architectural Record (3 November 2016).

The Hertie fact sheet finds that almost all the causes existed before the 2006 contract. Three matter most for designers:

• Unfinished design at contract: when the contract was signed and work began, some areas had construction drawings, some were only at design stage, and some were budgeted but not yet designed.
• Split responsibility: detailed design was divided between the general contractor and the general designer, leaving the city's project company between two parties who blamed each other.
• Optimism: high expectations, underestimated risk, too little reserve and an inexperienced client team.

Herzog & de Meuron themselves showed the project at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale as an example of how rising costs affect the building industry (Dezeen).

Reception: critics, musicians and the public

In Architectural Record, Suzanne Stephens was largely admiring. She wrote that "the glass of the upper portion drapes and ripples like a real curtain", while noting that the price tag had risen tenfold.

The acoustics have had a more mixed reception. At a Mahler concert on 12 January 2019, some listeners shouted that they could not hear the tenor Jonas Kaufmann and moved seats; Kaufmann told the Hamburger Abendblatt he would sing at the city's older Laeiszhalle instead, as reported by RTBF Musiq'3 (16 January 2019). In a December 2021 interview with VAN, republished by the Elbphilharmonie, director Christoph Lieben-Seutter defended the acoustics and said singers are sometimes advised to stand further back. Our reading: a vineyard hall serves a full orchestra heard from all sides; a solo voice facing one way is harder, which is why the hall advises singers where to stand.

The Elbphilharmonie's ten-year page counts about 6,200 concerts and about 29 million Plaza visits since 2017.

What designers in India can take from it

This is our reading, not a claim made by the sources.

1. Treat an old structure as a foundation, not just a facade. The warehouse's piles were reused and strengthened for 200,000 tonnes. Mills, godowns and port sheds in Indian cities can carry new uses too, but commission the soil and foundation audit before the concept, not after.
2. Finish the drawings before you tender. The single clearest cause of the overrun was signing a contract on incomplete design. On Indian public and private jobs alike, insist on a full working drawing set before an item-rate or lump-sum tender (see our guides to the drawing set you should receive and construction contract types).
3. If you use glass, make the glass work. Printed dots, coatings and openable panels control sun here, in a cool climate. Under Indian sun, pair glazing with external shading and check it against the energy code first.
4. Isolate halls from the city. Auditoria near metro lines, flyovers or plant rooms in India face the same problem as a hall above a port and a hotel. A box-in-box hall costs money and floor height, so decide it at concept stage.

Choosing a thesis? See our thesis topics by typology. More world case studies, such as our Sydney Opera House case study, are on the way.

Visiting the Elbphilharmonie

The Plaza page lists opening hours of 10:00 to 24:00 daily (last admission 23:30), with changed hours around Christmas and New Year. Plaza tickets can be booked online or on site; on 3 November 2026 the page listed a booking fee of 5 euros per pre-booked ticket, and concert ticket holders can enter the Plaza two hours before their concert. Guided tours are listed on the same page.

Want to see how architects in India handle reuse, structure and facades today? See projects by MOA members.

FAQ

Who is the architect of the Elbphilharmonie?

Herzog & de Meuron of Basel, led by Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. The warehouse it stands on, Kaispeicher A, was designed by Werner Kallmorgen. The acoustics are by Yasuhisa Toyota of Nagata Acoustics.

When was the Elbphilharmonie built?

The foundation stone was laid on 2 April 2007, the Plaza opened on 4 November 2016 and the concert hall opened on 11 January 2017. It had been planned to open in 2010.

How much did the Elbphilharmonie cost?

About 789 million euros to the city, as reported in 2016, against a first projected taxpayer share of 77 million. The Hertie School gives a total project cost of 865 million euros under the 2013 agreement, including ancillary costs.

How many seats does the Elbphilharmonie Grand Hall have?

2,100, according to the Elbphilharmonie and Nagata Acoustics (some press gave 2,150). The Recital Hall seats up to 550 and Kaistudio 1 seats 150.

Is the Elbphilharmonie Plaza free?

Not entirely. The official Plaza page lists a booking fee per ticket, with free entry for children under 3 and school groups and reduced fees for some visitors. Check the Plaza page for current terms.

Sources

• Elbphilharmonie Hamburg: The Elbphilharmonie (history, halls, Toyota, white skin, timeline) (accessed 3 Nov 2026)
• Elbphilharmonie Hamburg: The building (Kaispeicher history, height, roof, halls, hotel, flats, Tube) (accessed 3 Nov 2026)
• Elbphilharmonie Hamburg: The acoustics at the Elbphilharmonie (white skin, spring groups) (accessed 3 Nov 2026)
• Elbphilharmonie Hamburg: Plaza (access, hours, Tube, tours) (accessed 3 Nov 2026)
• Elbphilharmonie Hamburg: 10 years Elbphilharmonie (concerts and visitor numbers) (accessed 3 Nov 2026)
• Elbphilharmonie Hamburg / VAN, Hartmut Welscher: It's not only about acoustics, interview with Christoph Lieben-Seutter, December 2021 (accessed 3 Nov 2026)
• Herzog & de Meuron: 230 Elbphilharmonie Hamburg (phases, client, credits, data, concept text) (accessed 3 Nov 2026)
• Nagata Acoustics: Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Grosser Saal, data sheet (design approach, volume, materials, acoustic data, cost) (accessed 3 Nov 2026)
• Permasteelisa Group: Façade in Focus: Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg (facade units, glass, curves, testing, Plaza) (accessed 3 Nov 2026)
• Hertie School, Jobst Fiedler and Sascha Schuster: Öffentliche Infrastrukturvorhaben in Deutschland: Der Fall Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, fact sheet, May 2015 (cost table, delay, causes) (accessed 3 Nov 2026)
• Dezeen, Amy Frearson: Herzog & de Meuron's Elbphilharmonie Hamburg announces completion in lights, 1 Nov 2016 (cost figures, Venice 2012, seats, Plaza) (accessed 3 Nov 2026)
• The Local / DPA: €700m over budget, Hamburg concert hall finally finished, 1 Nov 2016 (cost and schedule) (accessed 3 Nov 2026)
• Architectural Record, Suzanne Stephens: Elbphilharmonie by Herzog & de Meuron, 3 Nov 2016 (review, stall in construction) (accessed 3 Nov 2026)
• RTBF Musiq'3: Jonas Kaufmann dispute sur la scène de l'Elbphilharmonie, 16 Jan 2019 (January 2019 concert) (accessed 3 Nov 2026)
• Structurae: Kaispeicher A (construction dates, architect) (accessed 3 Nov 2026)