Mozarteum University receives new building in Salzburg
The Salzburg Mozarteum University is getting another urgently needed building. Research workplaces, rehearsal rooms and offices for the studio for electronic music are to be created on the vacant construction site directly next to the Paracelsus bath in the spa garden by autumn 2024. According to Rector Elisabeth Gutjahr, a centerpiece of the new building will be a multimedia and digitization laboratory which is unique in Austria and which runs under the name “X-Reality-Lab”.
The laboratory is to serve as an artistic workshop, research and production room for audiovisual design, a short good year on Monday for the project presentation. The second beneficiary of the UMAK (Mozarteum University am Kurgarten) will be the Salzburg Bach Choir, in addition to the art college itself, which is plagued by lack of space. The bald 40-year-old vocal ensemble has been looking for rehearsal rooms for ten years and is getting a home after a decade of nomadism.
The design for the building came from the hand of the architectural office Berger + Parken, which also designed the Paracelsus-Badkin, which opened in 2019. It will consist of two interconnected components with three or five storeys and have green roof areas, a café and a roof terrace. According to Rector Gutjahr, the submission planning was completed at the beginning of October. Today she expects construction to start in spring 2022. “After two years of construction, the opening is possible in autumn 2024, even if that is a very ambitious schedule.”
The main users of UMAK will be the Mozarteum singing and instrumental and singing pedagogy departments, while the opera and music theater department will have a new rehearsal room. The lion’s share of the construction costs of around 20 million euros is borne by the federal government with 13.6 million euros, the state of Salzburg contributes three million euros. From the city and the country another 700,000 euros each for the rooms of the Bach choir, the choir itself comes with 200,000 euros. The Mozarteum University brings in 1.7 million euros in its own funds.
Governor Wilfried Haslauer (ÖVP) spoke today of a further strengthening of the university and college location Salzburg. The new building is part of the cultural buildings economic stimulus program, which provides for investments of 518 million euros in existing and new cultural sites throughout the state by 2030.