Ruhepol Centralkino / Acoustic Refuge
Part of Hörstadt / Acoustic City
Copyright: Linz09
Ruhepol Centralkino, a specially designed acoustic refuge at Landstraße 36 in downtown Linz.
WHAT // Acoustic Refuge
WHERE // Ruhepol Centralkino: Landstrasse 36, 4020 Linz
WHEN // 29 November 08 - 21 November 09
Opening Hours // Tuesday to Sunday, 12 Noon to 9 PM, Closed Monday
Preliminary project // Roland Gnaiger, Lotte Schreiber, Richard Steger and students in the Linz Art University’s Architecture Program: Maciej Szymon Chmara, Simone Barbara Götze, Rupert Plasser, Cornelia Reithofer, Anna Maria Rosinke, Christine Zöchbauer
Organization // Klemens Pilsl
Design and Supervising Engineer // Richard Steger, Tobias Hagleitner, Gunar Wilhelm
Contractor // Georg Oberhaidinger
Support // Christian Denkmaier, Jürgen Wöntner, Michael Lindner, Annemarie Obermüller, Gernot Dürrschmit, Philipp Olbeter, Peter Payer, Christan Diabl, Margit Greinöcker, Claudia Hutterer, Silke Mayr, Gerold Zeidler, Klemens Kreindl, Martina Berger, Anatol Bogendorfer, Marie Gahleitner, Alexandra Schulz, Florian Sedmak, Elke Wagner
Ruhepol is a project of Acoustic City and Linz 2009 European Capital of Culture
Acoustic City Concept: Peter Androsch
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Copyright: Linz09
Ruhepol Centralkino is based on an idea by Viennese urban researcher and acoustician Peter Payer, whose concept was, in turn, inspired by an early 20th-century precursor. Almost 100 years ago, Dresden physician R. Sommer set up a public hall of silence that was a very popular feature among visitors to the Hygiene Exhibition there.
The aim of this historical model of a publicly accessible acoustic refuge was above all to have a claming effect upon citydwellers who had been made “nervous,” edgy and irritable by their increasingly noisy surroundings and the acceleration of everyday life. And a major part of Acoustic City’s mission is to establish a space amidst the cityscape that is free of noise pollution and that enables people to experience the elementary auditory phenomenon of silence in a non-religious setting.
The venue has had an eventful past. Landstraße 36 was once the address of Hotel Schiff, the scene of bloody skirmishes between the forces of the Austro-fascist regime and republican resistance fighters during the Austrian Civil War in February 1934. Later, the building complex housed the Social Democratic Party’s local headquarters and Centralkino, a mecca for generations of Linz cinéastes and a bastion that defied the extinction of downtown movie theaters until 2000.
The architectural measures put in place by Roland Gnaiger, Richard Steger, Tobias Hagleitner and Wilhelm Gunar of the Linz Art University’s Architecture Program have been limited to a very restrained reconfiguration of the existing substance that takes advantage of the available space in a way that reorders its sensual qualities and enables visitors to experience them.
The actual acoustic refuge is located in the former screening room itself. The exits to the lobby along the side walls were closed off; the loge section of the original layout was reactivated and used as an access level. Both of the round spaces in the rear corners of the building were coated with warm-colored, brightly-lit soundproofing (convoluted) foam. They thus serve as both attractive transitional zones and buffers between the lobby and the acoustic refuge.
The ‘80s lobby furnishings left over from the movie-house days have been removed. The underlying structures—some original fittings going back to 1909—were brought to light and given a coat of reed-green paint. A lighter-colored drapery cocoon partitions off a space within a space amidst this raw substance refined with color. Here, at small tables, guests can drink tea, converse or read.
Inside the main hall, wood is the sensorially soothing main design element. A loosely-woven tissue of plywood sheets is draped over the structural walls. A window shaft situated high up the wall lets a concentrated ray of daylight stream in. With a height difference of about one meter to the loge level, the floor becomes a landscape of wood featuring steps and inward-sloping multi-level terraces on which groupings of beanbag chairs offer the possibility of sitting, reclining and listening to the sound of the space.
WHAT // Acoustic Refuge
WHERE // Ruhepol Centralkino: Landstrasse 36, 4020 Linz
WHEN // 29 November 08 - 21 November 09
Opening Hours // Tuesday to Sunday, 12 Noon to 9 PM, Closed Monday
Preliminary project // Roland Gnaiger, Lotte Schreiber, Richard Steger and students in the Linz Art University’s Architecture Program: Maciej Szymon Chmara, Simone Barbara Götze, Rupert Plasser, Cornelia Reithofer, Anna Maria Rosinke, Christine Zöchbauer
Organization // Klemens Pilsl
Design and Supervising Engineer // Richard Steger, Tobias Hagleitner, Gunar Wilhelm
Contractor // Georg Oberhaidinger
Support // Christian Denkmaier, Jürgen Wöntner, Michael Lindner, Annemarie Obermüller, Gernot Dürrschmit, Philipp Olbeter, Peter Payer, Christan Diabl, Margit Greinöcker, Claudia Hutterer, Silke Mayr, Gerold Zeidler, Klemens Kreindl, Martina Berger, Anatol Bogendorfer, Marie Gahleitner, Alexandra Schulz, Florian Sedmak, Elke Wagner
Ruhepol is a project of Acoustic City and Linz 2009 European Capital of Culture
Acoustic City Concept: Peter Androsch
Produced jointly by Linz 2009 European Capital of Culture, the local organization of the Social Democratic Party of Austria and the Architecture Program at Linz University of Art and Industrial Design, and based on an idea by Dr. Peter Payer, historian and urban researcher
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