Creativity at Work

Frank O. Gehry’s plan for the Walt Disney Concert Hall is marvelous, a brilliant and innovative addition to the Music Center. It is not surprising that his plan was the unanimous choice of the Disney Hall Committee, even though the careful, methodical, professional process followed in the selection had resulted in four proposals--each with ingenious and interesting elements.

The hard work now begins. The generosity of Lillian B. Disney, the widow of Walt Disney, will provide about $65 million of the projected cost of $100 million. Clearly, significant additional gifts will be required to ensure completion of the complex, which is to include a 1,000-seat chamber-music hall, offices and commercial space in addition to the 2,500-seat concert hall that will be the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Gehry’s plan must now undergo the challenge of being adapted to a realistic budget, as cost estimates are generated, and of being adjusted to ensure acoustical perfection, with the assistance of an acoustician now being chosen through international competition.

The community will benefit greatly if it is able to preserve Gehry’s plan in its totality. There is a rewarding spaciousness to the way in which he has planned this block, just south of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Beyond that, however, he has suggested more open space on the east side of Grand Avenue adjacent to the hall--a proposal that officials will be well advised to respect as they weigh the pressure for more commercial development. And he has suggested complementary plans for further development along the south side of 1st Street from the new Music Hall east to Hill Street.

Much of the sense of spaciousness for the planis inspired by a vast glass-enclosed foyer on the north side of the block, creating a plaza connection to the chamber-music facility and visual linkage across 1st Street to the Chandler Pavilion. The Concert Hall itself places the orchestra virtually at the center, surrounded by the audience, in a configuration that dominated the plans of the four finalists and emulates the most successful of Europe’s new concert halls. It holds the promise of a new intimacy between orchestra and audience. The community has much to be grateful for as this project moves ahead. Mrs. Disney’s gift has been enhanced by her engagement in a selection process that serves as a model for such projects. The 10-member Disney Hall Committee has been under the leadership of Frederick M. Nicholas, with Richard Koshalek, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, as chairman of the architectural committee.

It was at the Museum of Contemporary Art that Los Angeles recently had its first retrospective view of Gehry’s work--a homecoming of sorts fora man who trained at the University of Southern California and has always practiced in Los Angeles. That exhibition demonstrated his extraordinary creativity. Interesting as were the works on display in that presentation, however, none seemed the equal of this one.