Elbe Philharmonic Hall

The Elbphilharmonie, popularly nicknamed Elphi, is a concert hall in the HafenCity quarter of Hamburg, Germany, on the Grasbrook peninsula of the Elbe River.

The new glassy construction resembles a hoisted sail, water wave, iceberg or quartz crystal resting on top of an old brick warehouse near the historical Speicherstadt. The project is the result of a private initiative by the architect and real estate developer Alexander Gérard and his wife Jana Marko, an art historian, who commissioned the original design by the Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron, who developed and promoted the project for 3.5 years until the City of Hamburg decided to develop the project by itself. It is the key project of the new Hafencity development and the tallest inhabited building in Hamburg, with a final height of 108 metres.