Opened in January 2017, the Elbphilharmonie is a concert hall by Herzog & de Meuron, set on top of an old brick warehouse on the Elbe River in Hamburg's HafenCity. The warehouse, Kaispeicher A, was built in 1963.
The new glass building rises above the solid brick base with a wavy roofline that has been compared to a sail, a wave or an iceberg. About a thousand of its glass windows are curved. A long, curving escalator carries visitors up to the Plaza, a public terrace at the top of the warehouse with views across the city and the harbor, open even to those without concert tickets. Above it are the concert halls, a hotel and apartments.
It is the tallest inhabited building in Hamburg, at 354 feet. Its construction ran years late, and its cost rose from an estimated €241 million to €866 million.
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