Walt Disney Concert Hall
- Architect
- Frank Gehry
- Year
- 2003
- Style
- Deconstructivism
- City
- Los Angeles, CA
The Walt Disney Concert Hall at 111 South Grand Avenue is the fourth home of the Los Angeles Music Center, designed by Frank Gehry and opened October 23, 2003. Lillian Disney gave an initial $50 million in 1987 to build the hall as a gift to Los Angeles and a tribute to Walt Disney's devotion to the arts and the city. It seats 2,265 people and houses the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Master Chorale, its sculptural stainless-steel form replacing the much-criticized Dorothy Chandler Pavilion as the city's flagship concert venue.
the building
Vineyard seating, tuned for sound. The hall's interior is a compromise between vineyard-style seating, where the audience surrounds the stage as at Hans Scharoun's Berliner Philharmonie, and the classical rectangular shoebox of the Vienna Musikverein or Boston Symphony Hall. Acoustician Minoru Nagata designed the sound, with the final work supervised by his protege Yasuhisa Toyota.
Stainless-steel sculpture. Bounded by Hope Street, Grand Avenue, and 1st and 2nd streets, the hall's exterior is built from sculptural stainless-steel forms, a signature Gehry gesture that is highly visible from the sidewalk and immediately distinguishes the building from the classical civic architecture around it.
A $50 million gift. Lillian Disney's 1987 gift of $50 million launched the project as a tribute to her late husband Walt Disney's devotion to the arts and to Los Angeles, funding what became the fourth and most architecturally ambitious hall of the Music Center.
the style
Gehry's design belongs to Deconstructivism, and the concert hall is one of the style's most celebrated large-scale expressions -- its billowing stainless-steel surfaces reject the boxy rationalism of the civic buildings nearby in favor of dynamic, sculptural form.
More on Deconstructivismthe architect
Frank Gehry is a world-renowned architect, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall stands among his best-known and most acclaimed works, praised both for its architecture and, unusually for a Gehry building, for its acoustics.
More on Frank Gehrymore by Frank Gehry
nearby
- REDCAT
- Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
- Los Angeles Department of Water and Power General Office (John Ferraro) Building
- Million Dollar Theater Building
- Los Angeles County Hall of Records
- Bradbury Building