The Haus Marteau concert hall, designed by Munich architect Peter Haimerl, offers visitors an impressive interplay of architecture and acoustics. Thirty-three granite fragments, each weighing several tons, define the room’s extraordinary appearance while also shaping its remarkable sound experience. For the indirect lighting of this new highlight in the Upper Franconian town of Lichtenberg, custom LED linear luminaires from Barthelme with 48 V technology are used.
Nestled in the gentle hills of the Franconian Forest on the outskirts of the town of Lichtenberg lies the international music centre Haus Marteau. The three-storey villa has been a place of high musical culture since it was built in the early 19th century. Its original owner, Henri Marteau, was an internationally renowned violin virtuoso and celebrated teacher, and his legacy continues to this day.
Each year, numerous masterclasses with distinguished lecturers are held in the listed building, where outstanding young musicians from all over the world refine their skills. After four years of construction, a spectacular concert hall now provides a fitting setting for the regularly held final concerts.
With his design, the architect drew on Upper Franconia’s mining heritage and placed the new concert hall beneath a green hill directly next to Haus Marteau. This preserved the view of the villa with its distinctive silhouette in full, while also maintaining the elegant park surrounding the building.
The underground concert hall is reached through the cellar of the house via a narrow, tunnel-like passage, harmoniously illuminated by two continuous LED light lines with a colour temperature of 3000 Kelvin. To implement this solution, the electrical installers relied on Barthelme LEDlight flex 48 V LED strips, which were installed in LED profiles from the BARdolino series.
The use of 48 V technology offers the advantage of enabling significantly longer feed-in lengths for the LED solution. Depending on the supply cable and cable cross-section, it is possible to operate more than 20 m of LED strip with just one feed-in point. This greatly reduces installation costs while also conserving resources, as fewer LED controllers and power supplies are required to operate the LED strips.
From the narrowness of the passage, visitors finally enter the overwhelming concert hall. Tetrahedral granite fragments, each weighing several tons, define the overall appearance of the nearly 170 m² room and make it a uniquely atmospheric highlight.
The indirect lighting is provided exclusively by backlighting the granite fragments. This creates an impressive interplay of light and shadow, giving the fantastic space a sense of infinite depth. Here, too, the electrical installers made use of the advantages of LEDlight flex 48 V LED strips, installed in LED profiles from the BARdolino series.
The longest light line in the concert hall measures 9.40 m. To achieve this length, individual profiles were cut to size and then mounted end to end on swivel mounting clips. At the joints, the LED strips were separated and reconnected using flexible cable bridges. This prevents damage to the LED strip caused by the thermal expansion of the aluminium profiles.
The LED strips from the LEDlight flex 12 8p 48 V series achieve a luminous flux of 2,170 lm/m at a colour temperature of 4000 K.
In addition to the use of 48 V LED strips, the swivel mounting clips also play a particularly important role in this project. They enabled the linear luminaires to be precisely aligned after installation. Another decisive factor in selecting this solution was that the LED profiles are flexibly mounted within the clips. This prevents potentially disruptive noise caused by the expansion of the aluminium profiles during operation at musical events.
In total, 140 m of custom luminaires with 48 V technology were installed in the concert hall. They are connected via CHROMOFLEX PRO DALI LED controllers and a DALI gateway to the building’s own KNX control system. As a result, the lighting is integrated into the building network and can be conveniently programmed and controlled.
Client: District of Upper Franconia
Architecture: Peter Haimerl, Munich
Technical implementation and electrical installation: Elektro Eberlein
Photography: © Max Hörath