Amare Home of the Performance Arts / NOAHH

Amare Home of the Performance Arts / NOAHH

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Text description provided by the architects. Amare is the new Performing Arts Center in The Hague (NL): home of the Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT), the Residentie Orkest, the Royal Conservatoire, and the Amare Foundation. Optimally integrated into the city’s urban plan, Amare is the soul of the cultural heart of The Hague. The building is an architectural eye-catcher with international allure, designed for the municipality of The Hague by NOAHH in collaboration with JCAU and NL Architects. A large part of Amare is accessible to the public and the building offers an unprecedented number of possibilities for the ways in which it can be used.

Multiversum. Amare has significant added value to the liveliness and versatile character of the city center. It is an urban ensemble where activities can take place 24/7. The lower layers of the building form a fordable and welcoming passage through which everyone can move freely. Amare is designed as a ‘Multiversum’: an inviting, multifunctional, lively cultural and social space with streets, alleyways, and squares nestled in-between large buildings. A visit to Amare gives the experience of zapping through cultural dimensions. In addition to the four large auditoriums, there are many smaller studios. What is unique about Amare is that students, professionals, and the public co-exist in one building. Internal connections between the domains of the Royal Conservatoire, the Residentie Orkest, and NDT enable spontaneous interactions.

A graceful and compact building. The compact building has an understated yet confident design with an iconic, rhythmic facade. The natural continuity of the urban fabric has been achieved by opening the facade ‘like a series of theatre curtains’, with spacious passageways. The organically designed tree-branch structure is composed of prefabricated concrete elements. The vertical windows of the music studios and office spaces behind them run from floor to ceiling. As a result, there is good visual contact with the street and what is happening inside becomes visible outside.

Identities. Amare accommodates different worlds in one building thanks to a rich variety of materials and colors. Each auditorium has a particular, recognizable exterior finish. For example, the finish of the Dance Theatre is made from bamboo and the Concert Hall is enveloped in a gold-colored metal plate. Surrounding the auditoriums are foyers with a corresponding atmosphere. The Dance Theatre’s anthracite-black interior references the old Lucent Dance Hall. The many movable wall panels provide excellent variable acoustics for dance, speech, and opera. The Concert Hall is predominantly classical in its design. The concrete wall finishes and gold-colored sliding panels that regulate the acoustics are unique. Amare has world-class acoustics thanks to Federico Cruz Barney from Studio DAP Paris.

Paragon of sustainability. Amare has been awarded a BREEAM Excellent certificate, which is a unique performance for a cultural building of this size and complexity. Regarding BREEAM, sustainable energy and technology are just as important as satisfaction, quality, and user-friendliness. The roof is fully equipped with solar panels. The reuse of the existing underground parking garages is also a special feature. In addition to its future value, and building on what was already there, Amare is an ‘inclusive building’: a building that is accessible to literally everyone, so much so that there are even birdhouses and bat roost tucked snuggly between the branches of the facades.