Walt Disney Concert Hall

The Walt Disney Concert Hall is a complex of theaters located at Los Angeles, conceived by Frank Gehry and inaugurated in October 2003.

It lodges the Philharmonic orchestra of Los Angeles, and is thus sometimes called Walt Disney Symphony Hall. It is on a ground of 15.000 m ² in the downtown area, with two steps of Civic Center and five hundred meters of the town hall.

History

The project is launched thanks to a first donation of fifty million dollars made in 1987 by Lillian Disney, widow of Walt Disney, continuing the wish to support art (see the section on CalArts in the heritage of Disney).

In 1988, the architect Frank Gehry is indicated to carry out the plan of the building. The first draft is revealed in 1991 before that of the Guggenheim museum of Bilbao, presented in February 1993, which resembles the concert hall much.

The initial budget of the project is not enough to carry out the musical complex, also the town of Los Angeles takes part in the financing of the construction of the six levels of basements (primarily of the carparks). The Disney family will contribute again by gifts for a total exceeding the hundred million dollars.

The carpark started in 1992 is completed in 1996. For lack of funds, the construction of the concert hall, in “the shape of flower” of concrete and glass, starts only in 1999. Many people, companies and associations take part in their turn with the financing of the project. The steel inoxydale frontage is added in December 2002 and the Orgue of the large auditorium to spring 2003.

The first concert was given to the autumn 2003 by the new resident of the places, the Philharmonic orchestra of Los Angeles.

Interior spaces

Spaces of spectacles

Walt Disney Concert Hall counts five spaces for the music and the culture.

The auditorium is a room of 2.265 places designed by Frank Gehry and of the acoustics experts of reputations of which Yasuhisa Toyota and Minoru Nagata of the company Nagata Acoustics. The Acoustic and the visual aspect were worked with an equal care. One of principal centers design was a great intimacy between the musicians and the listener-spectators.

The hall was designed like a vine with a roof curved out of wood to retain acoustics characteristic of a traditional concert hall in the shape of “shoe box”. The public is laid out around a central platform accommodating the orchestra. A organ was installed just between the seats and the back of the scene. It was built in Germany by the company Glatter-Götz Orgelbau according to the drawings of the architect Frank Gehry and the Organ builder Manuel Rosales, based with Los Angeles.

Walls and ceilings are broad sawn timber panels of Sapin Douglas (pseudotsuga menziesii) and a broad window of twelve meters to the back allows the entry of the natural light for the concerts in day.

The complex includes/understands also two external amphitheaters and other spaces:

a theater for the children, being able to accommodate three hundred children or two hundred adults.
a small room in concert of one hundred twenty places.
a hearth for the receptions.
Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater, which proposes a theater multi-use with two hundred and fifty places and a gallery of Article It is managed by the California Institute off the Arts with a special entry and is located at the south-western angle of the complex, the intersection of Second Street and of Hope Street.

Public spaces

The Atrium Reception Hall is the main entrance of the building, on Large the Avenue. It includes/understands broad picture windows giving a strong impression of opening to the complex. At the ground floor, various services are proposed of which certain just behind the panes:

a restaurant;
a shop;
a coffee;
of the offices;
the entry of the underground car park.

The Pre-Concert Hearth makes it possible to accommodate more than six hundred people for all expressed dependant or not on a concert.

Green Room is an intermediate room connecting the slides to spaces of the public. In the tradition of the theater, it allows an interaction between the artists and the spectators.

In the same way, Founders Room allows the meeting between the givers and the artists. At side is Founders Garden, a private garden who authorizes the events with the great outdoors.

Before the concerts and during the intervals, the spectators can refresh themselves with a bar in terrace above the Atrium Reception Hall, a bar on the third level and several other places.

A garage of two thousand two hundred places, distributed on six levels, is located under the hall; the spectators, who can reach it since three streets around the complex, go to the hearth thanks to a series of elevators.

Workspaces

Reserved spaces with the musicians of the orchestra include rooms of repetition choral societies and orchestral, cloakrooms, a library and a room of reading, warehouses for the instruments, and a room of rest.

Special cabins for the invited musical director and chiefs and artists will enable them to prepare for the concerts and to receive.

Los Angeles Philharmonic Center, located at the South of the complex, includes offices, meeting rooms and conference, and a space of reception conceived by Chu+Gooding Architects.

Restaurants and the shop

Patinated It
the Concert Hall Coffee
Phil Store, shop official of the orchestra

See too

Disney and architecture

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