The Grieghallen
occupies a site on the corner of
Nygårdsgaten and Strømgarten in
Bergen’s city centre. It took a
long time to get this concert hall
built with years going by before there
was any agreement on the actual
site. The competition to find a
design ended on February 1, 1965, and
after three weeks of evaluation, the
submission by the Danish architect
Knud Munk was chosen from the 70
entries. What followed was a
protracted fund raising project.
The campaign promised “Grieg
Hall in 1970 or your money
back”.
The ground was broken in 1967 but by
1970 the building was still incomplete
although apparently no one asked for
their money back. Things got
worse when the money ran out and
construction came to a halt for five
years. In addition the building
had more than a few critics. The
Grieg Hall website explains that it
was described by some as, “This
horrible house, scrap heap of rust
stained the flagstones and
staining the good folks
overcoats. They had polluted
the city center with a concrete
monstrosity, a giant bunker".
However, work did resume after a lot
of effort. As the Grieghallen
website says it is normal for a
building to undergo two or three
adjustments during construction but
the Grieghallen endured twenty.
The end product was this 1500 seat concert
hall that is home to the Bergen
Philharmonic Orchestra. It was named
after the Bergen born composer Edvard
Grieg who was music director of the Bergen
Philharmonic Orchestra from 1880 until
1882. The building is also a venue
for cultural events, trade exhibitions,
conferences, receptions and
banquets. Since its completion in
1978 the building has seen some
refurbishment. Apparently, in the
summer of 2014, when I took these images,
it was,
“... in the second
stage of renewing auditorium seating
and complete new stage technology.”