Walt Disney Concert Hall

Bunker Hill is slowly filling up and creating an important cultural urban area. The rule of the "Bilbao effect" also applies in LA. While in the past there were only skyscrapers full of office workers at the foot of the hill, in the next two years there will be 8,000 new apartments with corresponding amenities built at Bunker Hill. The opera building from 1964 was complemented in the 1980s by the postmodern gallery MoCA by Arata Isozaki. In recent years, a cathedral (by Rafael Moneo), Caltrans (a state building by Morphosis), and Colburn (a private art school) have emerged here, and the latest addition is a concert building with two halls and an outdoor auditorium designed by architect Frank Gehry and Japanese acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota. While the acoustician was inspired by the rectangular box of the Golden Hall of the Vienna Musikverein, Gehry studied the irregular layout of the auditorium of the Berlin Philharmonic by Hans Scharoun. The completely different perspectives of two individuals on the same matter, however, did not prevent the creation of one of the best concert halls in the world.
Thanks to a generous donation from Lillian Disney, a competition could be announced in 1987, in which Gehry defeated Böhma, Hollein, and Stirling. However, the winning design was, due to its clumsiness, reminiscent more of a supermarket than a cultural building. Only four years later did the program CATIA allow him to transfer his vision from countless sketches and paper models into a real project. When he then presented the latest designs for Disney Hall at the 5th Architecture Biennale in Venice, the project was dubbed "a giant stone sprout of California madness" (yes, the first designs were made of stone). The recession of the American economy and the subsequent earthquake in California in 1994 put the project on hold, which had its positive aspects. In short: Frank Gehry had already proven himself to Disney with the realization of the administrative building and the ice hockey arena in Anaheim. At the American Center in Paris, he found out that building organic shapes from stone might not be the right way. In the Spanish Bilbao, he tested a unique way of constructing twisted forms using CATIA, so that he could later apply all the accumulated experience in the realization of Walt Disney Concert Hall.
The main hall is a simple box whose walls and ceiling curve baroquely. The light wooden paneling of the walls and the floral pattern of the seats also resulted in the space not feeling so monumental. Despite its size (2,265 seats), it still offers a sense of intimacy while maintaining high sound quality. The organs from the German company Glatter-Götz, resembling a bundle of flowers, were also created based on sketches by Frank Gehry. The funding for this entire public building came entirely from private sources.
We in the editorial team love FOG not for his quirky forms but for his courage in using new design methods, construction techniques, and experimentation with new building materials.