Anneliese Brost Musikforum Ruhr

About this place

Opened in 2016, the Anneliese Brost Musikforum Ruhr is the home of the Bochum Symphony Orchestra and a model of how to build a concert house around an existing ruin. Designed by the Stuttgart practice Bez + Kock, it weaves together three parts: the deconsecrated neo-Gothic church of St. Marien, kept as a luminous central foyer; a large concert hall seating just over a thousand; and a smaller hall for around 250, used for chamber music and education. The old church anchors the complex and gives it a public, almost civic heart — its restored nave acting as the social space where audiences gather between the two new halls. The new building wraps around it in a restrained palette of pale brick and warm timber, deferring to the church’s masonry while clearly reading as contemporary. The main auditorium is a clean, acoustically focused room in light wood, designed for the directness of orchestral sound rather than visual spectacle. Funded in large part by citizens’ donations, the Musikforum is also a story of a Ruhr city investing in culture, turning a derelict church on Marienplatz into a working centre for music.