The Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Scotland

The Usher Hall is a concert hall in the west end of Edinburgh, Scotland.
It has hosted concerts and events since its construction in 1914 and can hold approximately 2,200 people in its recently restored auditorium, which has fine acoustics. The construction of the hall was funded by Andrew Usher, a whiskey distiller, and blender, who donated £100,000 to the city specifically to fund a new concert hall. In 1910 an architectural competition was announced with the requirement that the hall be simple but dignified. The winning bid (one of 130 entries) came from Stockdale Harrison & Howard H Thomson of Leicester. The design was partly a backlash against Victorian Gothic, with a return to classical features owing much to the Beaux-Arts style. Its curved walls, unusual for the time, were made possible by developments in reinforced concrete. The dome was designed to reflect the curvature of the walls, not to give a domed interior (which would have been acoustically disastrous).

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