Water music: a new concert hall complex in Hamburg draws on the city's maritime history.

Despite a wealth of historic buildings. Hamburg has little in the way of contemporary landmarks, but Herzog & de Meuron's proposed Philharmonic Complex, for a site in HafenCity, is due to change all that. Currently taking shape on a former customs island in the middle of the River Elbe, HafenCity is an ambitious new city district for 30,000 workers and residents, but its array of blandly functional office blocks (predictable products of design and build tenders) is perhaps best viewed under the area's creative night-time illuminations.

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Poised on the roof of an existing port warehouse like the superstructure of a frigate facing out towards the open sea. Herzog & de Meuron's new building will act as a punctuation point at the west end of HafenCity. Under the tent-like roof, a 2200-seat auditorium, smaller 600-seat chamber music, rehearsal and conference hall, media library, 200-room five-star hotel and 33 apartments cluster around a partially open-air plaza, with restaurants, viewing balconies, specialist music shops and a wellness centre. The aim is to stage 365 concerts annually in the large hall, where the North German Broadcasting Company's Symphony Orchestra will also be in residence. Recording studios for orchestral performances, together with translation facilities, projection rooms and film screens for conferences, will greatly enhance Hamburg's lure for international star performers.

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Dominating the headland is the impressive wedge-shaped mass of Warehouse Block A, the bald, windowless, concrete-framed and brick-walled structure on which the new complex sits. Designed in 1966 by German architect Werner Kallmorgen, it is listed as a building deserving preservation, though not yet actually protected from demolition. In order to accommodate the new rooftop complex, its foundations will need to be strengthened, but this will still be cheaper than building on a conventional site. A cascade of escalators will cut through the volume of the warehouse to arrive, 35m above ground, at a public concourse on the existing roof, with views across church spires and canals. Within the brick hulk, where floors can support a live load of 3 tonnes per square metre, up to 700 parking spaces and a services level can be tucked out of sight. In Kallmorgen's original design, a gigantic aperture facing down river was cut into the fortress-like mass and dedicated to Adolf Loos. It was planned as the frontage for a dockers' cultural hall at the heart of their working environment. The developer wants to reinstate this window on the water as a transparent facade for another 1000 sq m of public exhibition spaces.

Developer Genius Loci, an architect turned investor, started preparing the project four years ago. It approached Herzog & de Meuron directly, without holding a competition, because of the partnership's radical approach. Although often invited over the years to design in Hamburg, this is the first commission the architects have accepted. Hamburg's politicians, who earlier championed a MediaPort project on the site, have been convinced by the architectural and financial plans, to the extent that the city has agreed to donate the rooftop site in perpetuity in the hope of gaining a German Bilbao.

Apartments and a hotel will be sold to finance most of the [euro]100 million building costs, and [euro]20 million is to be raised through public subscription, sponsors and donors. The Philharmonic plans to open on 4 June 2008, the centenary anniversary of Hamburg's present Laiesz Musikhalle, a nineteenth-century auditorium that has never been large enough for today's major music festivals, or had the right acoustics for contemporary music. It promises to be a musical and cultural quantum leap for Hamburg.