Walt Disney Concert Hall

In the same way that Indian-born writers working in English need respectful notices and prizes abroad before they’re taken seriously at home, Frank Gehry, who moved to Los Angeles from Canada in 1947 and studied architecture at the University of Southern California, needed the acclaim that followed his sinuous, reptilian museum in Bilbao for work to begin on the concert hall he’d been contracted to build in his home city nearly 10 years earlier. Suddenly, a Gehry building was a proven showstopper, the sort of singular cultural landmark that might transform a stolid, uninspired industrial city into a destination overnight. Los Angeles is no Bilbao but its downtown is a clump of nondescript towers, an unloved, unlovely part of the city. The Walt Disney Concert Hall is a striking building made of stainless steel, appropriately Blade Runnerish. But the glinting steel and the jagged edges are softened by the building’s curves. The Douglas fir panels and oak flooring in the main auditorium confirm the impression of warmth, of voluptuousness. And then there’s the pipe organ, the angular centrepiece of the auditorium, so many shards piercing any complacency encouraged by the room’s pliant curves. The Disney Concert Hall is still somewhat marooned in downtown LA but the surrounding plainness only sharpens the building’s strange beauty. See www.laphil.com.