There is little disagreement, however, about the spectacular nature of the building designed by the architect Jean Nouvel, whose previous work has included concert halls in Lucerne, Switzerland, and Copenhagen and the redesigned Lyon opera house. The extravagant aluminum structure looks like a collection of randomly stacked slabs, with significant space between them and a vertical slab cutting through the others.

The 2,400-seat auditorium reflects the influence of Berlin’s concert hall, also called the Philharmonie, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. All three are in the so-called vineyard style, with tiers of seats and balconies surrounding the stage in the manner of a vineyard on a slope. This configuration has become popular because it allows for unobstructed sight lines and promotes audience involvement by lessening the distance between the conductor and those seated farthest away, as compared to the conventional rectangular, or shoebox, design.

In the Philharmonie, the distance between the conductor and those farthest away will be 32 meters, or 105 feet, compared with 47 meters for the Salle Pleyel, which has 500 fewer seats.

The new hall will also feature modular seating that can be reconfigured in function of the artists or the works being presented. For example, if a concert features a singer, the stage can be positioned so that it is adjacent to a wall, thereby eliminating seats that would give a view of the singer’s back.

The idea of a new Paris concert hall was first floated in the 1970s. The administration of President François Mitterrand moved ahead with its “Grands Projets,” or modern monuments for Paris, during the 1980s — a program that included the creation of the Parc de la Villette complex, which encompasses the music museum and small concert hall of the Cité de la Musique. But in the end the construction of a new opera house, the Opéra Bastille, took priority over a large concert hall, and the decision to move ahead with the Philharmonie was made only in 2006.