Sky dome in Kresge Auditorium

Abstract

The relationship between the modern musical space and its origin in nature finds a clear manifestation in the Kresge auditorium designed and built by Eero Saarinen. On the one hand, this building condenses the experience of this architect designing musical spaces acquired in previous decades through various projects such as the tent for concerts in Aspen, Colorado (1949) and, previously in collaboration with his father Eliel Saarinen, in the Kleinhans Music Hall of Buffalo (1940). On the other hand, the conceptual radicalism of the Kresge audience is undoubtedly due to the will to express the original idea of the musical space by identifying the significant elements of the audience with a new language, through the clarity of the construction, the structure and the shape. A musical space characterized by the lightness of its vault that makes the presence of the ceiling disappear and by a smooth sloping ground that seeks to move us to nature, to a hillside in the landscape under the celestial vault, where music resonates in our imagination.