Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall

The Walt Disney Concert hall located in Los Angeles, California was created for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Lillian Disney, wife of the late Walt Disney donated fifty million dollars for the hall in memory of her husband. There was a design competition that was ultimately won by Gehry.

The design of the building was to address three main principal objectives. To provide the best possible acoustic environment for the orchestra, to provide a close connection between the musicians and the audience and to create a visionary building reflecting the culture, character and climate of the city of Los Angeles.


The many prototype designs conceived by Frank Gehry.

The criteria called for a 2,400 seat concert hall, a chamber music hall, a large foyer space for informal performances and civic gatherings and an underground parking area. With Gehry’s interpretation of acoustical parameters set out in the criteria he decided to have a hall configured to be a series of smaller rooms that focused towards the orchestra with seats sorrounding the stage.

The design of the outside of the building was representive of what he had created on the inside. It consisted of being a layered sculptural form of limestone rotated on the site to bend the symmetrical axis of the music centre toward the museum of contempary art. The entrance to the building was located off an urban plaza on Grand Avenue and linked to the Music Centre by a pedestrian bridge over First St.

Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall, addressed all the issues in the criteria set out by the client in an amazing way which pushed the boundaries on what is possible in the world of Architecture. The building is now a world famous building and a landmark of the city of Los Angeles.







F. Dal Co , K. Foster, Frank O. Gehry : the Complete Works, The Monacelli Press, New York, 1998, page 442-450

No comments:

Post a Comment