Casa da Música stands at the Boavista roundabout in Porto, Portugal. Rem Koolhaas of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture designed it, working with acoustician Renz van Luxemburg. Petra Blaisse of Inside Outside did the interiors. Construction began in 1999 and took about four years, at a cost of 100 million euros. The city of Porto owns the building, and it opened to the public on April 14, 2005.
The article describes an asymmetrical nine-floor polyhedron and likens it to the hull of a beached ship. White cement plaques cover the exterior, and a marble plaza surrounds it. Two walls are made entirely of glass, so the auditorium fills with daylight.
The main Suggia Hall holds about 1,238 seats. Its surfaces carry a gold-leaf woodgrain pattern.
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