Walt Disney Concert Hall

Frank Gehry

“Some people may say my curved panels look like sails. Well, I am a sailor, so I guess I probably do use that metaphor in my work – though not consciously.” –Frank Gehry. Frank Gehry is well known for designing the abstract and astonishing architecture for the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles California. The objective of this concert hall is to give a “visual and aural intimacy for an unparalleled musical experience” and “designed to be one of the most acoustically sophisticated concert halls in the world” says the La Philpedia.
Frank Gehry was born on February 28, 1929 in Toronto, Canada. As a child Frank had a very active imagination and was building artificial homes and cities solely from items he would find in his grandpas

Every aspect of the building went under intense drafting to ensure pure quality and a big wow factor to everyone who came in. The interior lobby is said to be an extension of the city and act as a “symbolic bridge between everyday life and inner sanctum that is intended to be a center of civic activity, not just another arena for concertgoers” says the La Philpedia.
Inside the main auditorium of the concert hall are 2,265 seats all strategically placed to maximize the interaction, visual, and auditorial experience. The executive producer says, “ balconies and boxes reinforced a social hierarchy and proscenium arches separated players from listeners.” The style of seating that is used in the hall is defined as Vineyard seating, which surrounds the stage, rising up in serried rows in the manner of the sloping terraces of a vineyard. They chose this seating in efforts to give the audience a closer seating and better view of the performers from any view of the hall along with how you perceived the audio. The stage was also so uniquely built that they used Alaskan Yellow Cedar. This flooring was chosen because of the unique benefits that it provides such as resonance and it can easily be manipulated to accommodate larger performing forces by completely removing the first rows in orchestra

The three dimensional space that he portrays with the concert hall is the mental picture that comes to mind when you look at his building. When I look at his architecture I think of sailboat sails, and that’s the visual element that he is trying to convey. The lines that he uses in the concert hall are curved rather than horizontal and vertical lines that you normally see. The shapes that he uses are greatly manipulated implied lines to suggest the view of sails. The hall is so massive in size and he uses every area to such great extent. The space that he has conveyed inside the building despite that face of such an abstract exterior is ingenious. The principle design of how he arranges these shapes is mind boggling to me. I couldn’t come up with the unusual design and still then find a way to put it all together and make it