In 1987, Lillian B. Disney, the wife of the late Walt Disney, gifted $50 million to the Los Angeles Music Center to fund a new concert hall. Architects were invited to submit ideas and Gehry won, proposing an approximately 300,000-square-foot, 2,265-seat auditorium. The building would be located on Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles. It would be naturally lit and have seats spread widely around the stage. The futuristic exterior would be made of curved sheets of stainless steel, and the auditorium would have state-of-the-art sound quality. City officials and donors hoped The Disney Concert Hall would help revitalize the heart of LA, a city known for its lack of unity.
Even before construction began, the Disney Concert Hall faced challenges. Mrs. Disney's gift provided foundational funding for both the concert hall and an adjacent parking garage, but the realization of Gehry's design required more money. Poor subsequent fund-raising, disagreements among city officials and California's faltering early-1990s economy kept the project from moving forward. Then, in 1996, Los Angeles philanthropist Eli Broad helped raise the necessary money and the project became revitalized. Though arguments over the budget continued throughout most of the process, construction began in 1999. The Disney Concert Hall finally opened its doors in 2003.
Not long after the Concert Hall's inauguration, Los Angeles drivers started reporting a blinding glare from its stainless steel surface. This led the city to hang a gray tarp over the offending portion of the building and launch a year-long study to determine the exact cause of the problem. During the study, researchers realized that the building's reflective surface also generated an excessive heat that affected the temperature of nearby buildings. With the approval of Gehry, technicians carefully sanded down certain areas on the hall's surface, making it less reflective.
Sound quality had been one of Gehry's main concerns when designing the concert hall. He teamed with Japanese acoustics expert Yasuhisa Toyota to create an auditorium in which each audience member experienced sound evenly. Generally, the acoustics in the Concert Hall received rave reviews. But some critics, like Anthony Tomasini of "The New York Times," found the experience satisfying but not outstanding. Others suggested that, while the space worked well for an orchestra, its acoustics did not complement smaller ensembles as successfully. Scientist Michael Noll leveled more biting critiques. Noll felt that inconsistent sound frequencies made for an unpleasant listening experience and that better acoustic design and more absorbent surfaces could have averted this problem.
Any project with the scale and prominence of the Disney Concert Hall inevitably encounters problems. A building's success depends on how well officials and architects address such problems. Up to this point, both Gehry and the city have handled challenges admirably, efficiently reducing the glare and heat emitted by the concert hall's surface. The acoustic complaints have yet to be addressed, but that may be because experts do not agree that problems with the sound quality exist. The Disney Concert Hall is still a young structure, and time will show how well it maintains its reputation as a premier concert venue.