Red Sea concert hall brings cultural life to Egyptian desert

An area of Egypt that was desert until 20 years ago is to be transformed into an international cultural hub with a concert hall designed by a British architect.

Construction is about to start on the 30,000sq m project by Christina Seilern, 49, the London-based architect who helped design the “Walkie-Talkie” skyscraper in the City, at El Gouna on the Red Sea.

Seilern, who opened another concert hall in the Swiss village of Andermatt yesterday, was commissioned to design the 620-seat music venue by Samih Sawiris, 62, who fell in love with classical music while attending concerts conducted by Herbert von Karajan and performed by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra when he was an engineering student in Berlin in the late 1970s.

Mr Sawiris, part of one of Egypt’s richest families and estimated to be worth £1.1 billion on his own, masterminded the development of El Gouna as a tourist destination since 1998. There are now 25,000 residents, 18 hotels, two golf courses and a football stadium.

Seilern said that she was inspired by local topography — the concert hall will be surrounded by an artificial lagoon — elements of Islamic architecture, and the scale of ancient Egyptian monuments. The performance space is intended to be acoustically perfect, to attract orchestras of the calibre of the Berlin Philharmonic. “We took on the project only five months ago, and are already moving into the construction phase, so it’s been incredibly fast-paced,” she said.