Excited about the return of live music this summer? Us too. And while we were thinking more along the lines of hitting up our nearest sticky-floored dive or club venue to kick off with, we wouldn’t say no to seeing a massive band inside a huge glass mountain.
Yes: the ‘Music Mountain’ is a thing that will soon exist, and specifically, it’s coming to the small Dutch city of Eindhoven. Plans are afoot to completely renovate a major shopping mall in the city by creating a music hub inside an artificial ‘mountain’, which gig-goers will be able to climb before or after the show. On the summit, a viewing platform will offer visitors incredible views over the city and surrounding region.
In the designs proposed by Dutch architects MVRDV, the De Heuvel shopping mall in Eindhoven’s centre will be ‘broken open’ to better connect it with the surrounding area. A rooftop park will give the built-up city a fresher, greener feel and encourage visitors to spend more time just hanging out in the centre rather than simply passing through.
The addition of a ‘stacked cultural space’ — which has been dubbed the ‘Music Mountain’ — on top of the mall building will see its existing music venue transformed into a ‘living room for the city’, with foyers where Eindhoven’s residents can chill out, socialise and work. The Muziekgebouw will also get an additional music space, allowing for a bigger, better concert programme.
Rotterdam-based firm MVRDV is known for its flashy, some might say gimmicky, urban transformation projects, including the temporary Marble Arch Hill installation currently being built to entice Londoners back to Oxford Street, and Taiwan’s Tainan Spring, a pool and green space built on the foundations of a former shopping mall.
So...anyone up for a weekend in Eindhoven featuring some live music in a sick new venue? Sounds like mountains of fun to us.
Music fans: King of the festivals Primavera Sound has just announced its 2022 lineup and it’s really, really good.
And wondering what seeing live music feels like now? We went to a weird government-run club night in the UK last month.