Walt Disney Concert Hall

Squint your eyes, and Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles looks like a gleaming clipper ship, its sails filled with wind. The stainless steel exterior forms, which were in fact inspired by Gehry’s love of sailing, have now become iconic.

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.

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.

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.

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