Walt Disney Concert Hall

Walk to the Blue Ribbon garden, which is the most beautiful part of the Concert Hall. Past the barge with billowing sails is a public park that doubles as an oasis for concertgoers. At the center of the garden is a rose fountain dedicated to Lillian Disney, who provided the initial donation for the Concert Hall. The fountain is constructed from broken pieces of Delft China, Lillian’s favorite. Gehry named the fountain, “A Rose for Lilly.”

Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall stands out as a truly unique architectural vision, demonstrating that something new and completely different is possible.

While many people first became familiar with Gehry through his Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, his design for the Walt Disney Concert Hall actually predates the Bilbao commission. However, Gehry continued to redesign the Disney Concert Hall for more than a decade, while unexpected delays postponed construction.

In architect Frank Gehry’s original design, Walt Disney Concert Hall was intended to be clad in stone. After receiving much acclaim for his titanium building in Bilbao, however, he was urged to change the stone to metal. With this new material Gehry was able to tweak the shape of the exterior, creating the iconic silver sails we see today.

Gehry’s innovative forms were a new and unfamiliar challenge for contractors. Gehry ultimately found a solution equal to his design: he employed software used in the design and construction of French fighter jets. Called CATIA (computer-sided three-dimensional interactive application), this software translates Gehry’s organic forms, panel by panel, into buildable construction plans.

To bring his bold new vision for the Walt Disney Concert Hall to life, architect Frank Gehry needed new tools. He turned to sophisticated computer software called CATIA (computer-aided three-dimensional interactive application), originally created to design French fighter jets. Watch the story.

Such a bold exterior could give the impression that what’s inside is equally out of the box. But surprisingly, the concert hall itself, by Gehry’s own description, is just that: a highly functional box, wrapped in his now-trademark sail-like forms.

That’s not to say that the interior is not an accomplishment in its own right. Gehry designed the auditorium to provide both impeccable acoustics and a sense of intimacy, wrapping the audience around the orchestra.

From its striking outside to its intimate inside, Walt Disney Concert Hall is an architectural marvel that never loses sight of its main function - bringing music to the city of Los Angeles and beyond. Get to know the building that architect Frank Gehry designed "from the inside out."

The first view of Walt Disney Concert Hall most people see is the curving stainless steel skin of the building’s exterior. Resembling silver sails, the curves echo the billows in the auditorium and play off the bowed cornice of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, forging a link between new and old.

Gehry’s team visualized the lobby as a transparent, light-filled “living room for the city,” opening onto the sidewalk. In contrast to the tightly enclosed foyer of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the lobby would have a separate identity and serve as a symbolic bridge between everyday life and the inner sanctum. Walt Disney Concert Hall was intended to be a center of civic activity, not just a destination for concertgoers.