DR Byen

The design of the Danish National Broadcasting Corporation headquarters is inspired by a kasbah. Jean Nouvel’s impressive concert hall makes up one of the building’s four segments.

DR Byen is a round-the-clock media ‘city’ inspired by a Middle Eastern casbah. This is where DR – the Danish Broadcasting Corporation houses studios, offices administration, new production within four segments of ‘unified variation’. 

Designed by different architects, each connects to the next by the glassy Indre Gade – or Inner Street – that facilitates conversation and community among its 2,500 staff.

Of the four segments, Jean Nouvel’s Koncerthuset resonates most deeply, both with the wider city’s residents and visitors, and with those working within its cobalt shell. Many Danish National Symphony Orchestra musicians reportedly welled up on first playing here.

Located in Ørestad, Koncerthuset comes to life with shapes, colours and projections as darkness falls. Its interior is inspired by a giant meteor, with the foyer as its core leading to four concert halls. With excellent acoustics by Yasuhisa Toyota, the largest of these halls is asymmetric, with undulating birch wood-clad walls, staggered seating podiums and red seats recalling the old venue’s timeworn leather ones.

The smaller studios each have their own theme: one – dressed in red – is for choruses; another, all in black, recalls a Steinway grand piano; the last features moveable wood-panelled walls and portraits of influential Danish artists.