Climbing blackout curtain in the new House of Music

Worldwide unique technical solution in Budapest

The international theatre supplier Tüchler, based in Vienna, Austria, shows its skills in the totally novel glass building. The T-LOK ROLLER COASTER was developed for the most difficult conditions. It can move enormous curtains with radii of 35 centimetres. A curtain can be opened or closed at an operational speed of 30 centimetres per second, over a difference in height of almost two metres.

The Magyar Zene Háza | House of Music Hungary opened in January 2022 and attracted international acclaim due to its unique architecture. It is also known as the “Liget Project”: The 9000 m² building is situated in the middle of the city park, a recreational area in Budapest. Liget is the Hungarian word for a wood.

The architectural motto of the design by Sou Fujimoto Architects is “nature and sound in harmony”. To achieve this, the Japanese architects conceived an organic wave-shaped roof, resting on slim pillars of steel surrounded by a zigzag double glass wall. The glass façade, also wave-shaped, brings the House of Music in harmony with nature fascinatingly well. The striking and unique effect is matched by few other buildings.

This is also due to the roof, similar to the cap of a perforated mushroom, with approximately 30,000 gold leaves set in the underside. The holes and the canopy of leaves give the enormous roof construction a feather light and natural appearance.  Surrounding trees are reflected in the glass façades, making them part of the City Park, despite their height of up to 13 meters.

Unique curtain technology for a unique house

The challenge: to black out a zigzag glass wall with a wave shaped top edge.

The Sou Fujimoto Architects employed the Japanese company Nagata Acoustics. The specialists are known for the acoustic design of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg – they create unique sound experiences

They developed the zigzag wall, that indirectly reflects soundwaves that hit the glass and lets them spread, to produce a homogeneous sound.

They developed the zigzag wall, that indirectly reflects soundwaves that hit the glass and lets them spread, to produce a homogeneous sound.

Due to this and the waveform of the roof, the line rises, is completely erratic and 3-dimensional. Up till then, no existing blackout system in the world could black out such a wall – what’s more, one with the dimensions of the glass walls in the House of Music Budapest.

It has to be possible to black out the large concert hall and the smaller lecture room. The architects decided to employ electrically controlled curtains, hung between the two layers of the glass walls.

The control system: T-LOK – KNX-UDP control

The TÜCHLER KNX-UDP control system is employed to control the total of 36 drives. The control system is conceived as a reactor and is based on Siemens components, it can be addressed either by the KNX-controls in use on location or by UDP.

The T-LOK – KNX-UDP control unit has an output of 24 volts, the power supply to the drives can be run either over a cable in the upper edge of the curtain or over conductor lines. The power supply in the House of Music Hungary uses cable for the power supply.

The Tüchler solution: The T-LOK Roller-Coaster

As one of very few curtain rails, the TT2 rail profile can be bent in upward and downward radii. Hereby, the minimum radius is 30 centimetres. What did not formerly exist, was a drive that could move a curtain along such a course.

TÜCHLER developed the T-LOK Roller-Coaster for the Liget Project from scratch, based on the self-driving curtain drive T-LOK. The T-LOK Roller-Coaster effortlessly manages 35 cm radi, that rise, fall or follow a conventional course.

The operation speed can be controlled. The maximum speed is 35 cm/sec. The traction of 16 kg is only limited by the friction of the traction wheel on the rail and can be raised by coupling several T-LOK Roller-Coasters according to special requirements.

The rising lower edge shows the height difference of 180cm well.

The curtain behind the stage area with 21m x 12.5-10.7m; 130kg is closed.