Berliner Philharmonie

The Berlin Philharmonic in the round, with no seat more than 32 metres from the conductor

Hans Scharoun put the orchestra in the middle and terraced the audience around it in 1963, which nobody had done before and half the concert halls built since have copied. The shape is asymmetric, the gold tent of a roof looks improvised and the acoustics are among the most argued-about in the world, which is another way of saying they are interesting rather than merely correct.

The Philharmonic itself remains one of the three or four finest orchestras anywhere, and the smaller Kammermusiksaal next door handles chamber programmes in the same geometry at a third of the size.