The €53m Conservatoire that can’t get a piano through its door

The €53m Conservatoire that can’t get a piano through its door

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norman lebrecht

December 30, 2015

The Spanish town of Torrevieja, in Valencia, is justly proud of its new conservatoire, built at a heavy cost to the public purse. But when they came to test the concert hall, there was no entrance for a piano to get into the building.

And when they finally squeezed one inside, the elevators were not designed to carry its weight.

Read about a sorry Spanish shambles in El Mundo here.

conservatorio

Comments

  • Peter says:

    Probably a typical insane public project mismanagement case.
    http://www.businessballs.com/images/treeswing/tree_swing_70s.jpeg

  • ruben greenberg says:

    It is easier to put a camel through the eye of a needle than to get a piano into the Torrevieja conservatory. Maybe this conservatory should specialize in period instruments and not go beyond the harpsichord repertory.

  • V.Lind says:

    Reminds me of the urban legend of university libraries whose designers failed to factor in the weight of the books in their design…

  • Alvaro says:

    Unemployment in Spain bordered 50% during the crisis, and here people celebrate that there’s a 53M euro house for the manufacturing and delivery of unemployed musicians with poor income as something POSITIVE?

    Mmmmm overvalued ‘public’ projects in a country with intense corruption. What could possibly have gone wrong?

    • Virginia Fry says:

      Did they try to remove a very large window of the room in which the piano was to be sited (presumably the auditorium which may not have windows), or to temporarily enlarge the mandatory fire exits?
      If a window was removed, the piano could have been hoisted up and through the window.
      If no windows, try the second idea.

  • Stereo says:

    Sadly another in a long line of Spanish public service funded projects that end in disaster.

  • Una says:

    Sounds like a good Irish joke – and I speak as someone with an Irish passport, in case someone thinks I’m racist!

  • MarieTherese says:

    Lest we think this idiocy is limited to the Spanish: Once upon a time, a group of men designed and built a building for Eastman Kodak on Ridge Road in Rochester, NY. They thought that a swimming pool would be a nice perk for the employees, so they put one on the 6th floor of the building, but neglected to check the structural elements. If the pool had been filled with water, the structure wouldn’t have been strong enough to support it and the sixth floor would have been in the basement! It was put to good use though, and the “Colorama” pics that were displayed in Grand Central Station (remember the shot of all of those babies?!) were laid out for inspection and retouching inside of the “pool” area for years.

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