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GOOFY - More than twenty years after the opening of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, widely celebrated as an exquisite monument to music, an enigmatic question has emerged, one so perplexing that, left unanswered, it can become a shallow and tarnishing anecdote.
The question, as it appeared in the Los Angeles Times on Feb. 25, 2024, authored by seasoned classical music critic Mark Swed, was “who did what to whom and when.” More explicitly, Swed rationalized that building the concert hall was a long, laborious, contentious, financially dicey process, “one for which we’ve never had a full or convincing account. I’ve never gotten straight answers about who did what to whom and when.”
Indeed, the Walt Disney Concert Hall project limped badly and almost crashed, victimized by disturbing funding shortages, bickering, and protracted construction holdups, as I wrote in my book, “The Making of Modern Los Angeles.” But straight answers were given to me, clearly and coherently, by the protagonists themselves, specifically on the naming of Frank Gehry as the project architect.
So, then, who did what to whom and when, as poignantly written by Swed, who asked: did “the jury know all along that Gehry was exactly what the orchestra and the city needed and that the only way to get it was to rig the competition by misleading the other architects?”
I summarize here the convincing accounts of jury members provided to me on the selection of Gehry, now considered by many the most important architect of our age, recipient of the field’s highest honor, the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1989, the National Medal of Arts, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
On May 12, 1987, Lillian Disney donated $50 million to build a concert hall honoring her late husband, Walt. It was the largest single donation until then for the arts. And it had to be built as an addition to the Music Center. Frederick M. Nicholas, an old hand in dealing successfully with civic complexities, and builder of the Museum of Contemporary Art, was asked to chair the project. Over lunch, he told me that to take on that difficult responsibility, he wanted two things: Mrs. Disney’s support, and a concert hall that related to the orchestra and audience, and to Los Angeles’ urban environment.
Nicholas picked an expert committee of nine relevant companions and toured Europe’s concert halls to gauge the vitality and artistry of each one, and to evaluate the acoustics. Returning to Los Angeles, he had architect Donna Vaccarino draft the building program with the help of Ernest Fleischmann, executive director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
The old guard at the Music Center resisted his vision, but undeterred, Nicholas called for a broad competition for the architect. An architectural subcommittee was appointed, and it picked 100 architects. After lengthy reviews, 25 were asked to submit their qualifications. At a subsequent discussion at the home of Mrs. Disney, the subcommittee then reduced the list to six: Gottfried Böhm of Cologne; Harry Cobb of New York; Frank Gehry of Venice, California; Hans Hollein of Vienna; Renzo Piano of Genoa; and James Stirling of London. As had been agreed earlier by the WDCH committee and the architectural subcommittee, one candidate by each group would be dropped, and they were: Piano, who had designed the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris, and Harry Cobb, who had designed the Library Tower, Los Angeles (now U.S. Bank Tower).
The competition had three main foci: a conceptual link to the Music Center; designing the building to its optimum potential and preliminary planning analysis of adjacent lots for commercial and retail space; and, importantly, acoustics.
Nicholas did not want any political appointee to influence the selection process and kept the city and county out of the architectural subcommittee, which comprised of John Walsh, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum; Earl A. “Rusty” Powell III, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Richard S. Weinstein, Dean of the UCLA School of Architecture and Urban Planning; Robert S. Harris, Dean of the USC School of Architecture; and Richard Koshalek, director of MOCA.
I was cognizant of the selection process and was provided with the meeting notes taken during the procedure by subcommittee member Robert S. Harris, Dean of the USC School of Architecture. He noted that Böhm was “exaggerated, extravagant, impractical, and seemingly disconnected from both the central purpose of this project and from the nature of Los Angeles.”
Stirling’s, work had become fragmented and unconvincing, noted Harris, and Hollein disappointed both urbanistically and programmatically. “He brought to our attention the opportunity for a sculptural, inventive, animated place, but he is not the person to provide it.”
Gehry was a happy narrative for Harris. His proposal included a particular quality that Harris encouraged in all architecture, “the kind of surprise that over-realizes our expectations. His design is not only clear but somewhat familiar,” he noted. “I didn’t know Walt Disney, of course, and I can’t say that he would approve. But I grew up with his films, and I know his fans will understand the connection.”
Richard S. Weinstein, dean of the UCLA School of Architecture and Urban Planning, member of the subcommittee, told me they also had consultants who independently evaluated the cost, acoustics, and the functional issues of the concert hall. Therefore, “the jury, in addition to its own expertise, also had very distinguished consultants answering questions just to the jury.”
Finally, on December 5, 1988, following exhaustive deliberations, the Disney Concert Hall Committee gathered to hear the recommendations of the subcommittee. Mrs. Disney was also present, wearing her “lucky red dress.” Each subcommittee member explained his selection and the reasons behind it. Weinstein found Böhm’s proposal “preposterous, sort of romantic, Wagnerian excess to be really a way of showing contempt for Los Angeles. Stirling’s tiered interlocking balconies design disappointed, and when asked to redesign to improve sight lines, he refused. Hollein’s four alternative schemes aiming to connect with populist culture were termed “beyond tastelessness.”
Four of the five subcommittee members nominated Frank Gehry for the project, who presented an original architectural statement, a “living room” for the city, with openness and space and a lush garden. The 2,265-seat concert hall cost an estimated $284 million.
Gehry won an arduous competition judged by a competent and thoughtful jury. In response, then, to who did what to whom and when, the answer is well documented. Gehry’s talent and a meticulous process gave Los Angeles a striking landmark, one with an imposing, curvaceous, stainless-steel façade, which has inspired Los Angeles and the world.
(Nick Patsaouras is CityWatchLA featured writer. This commentary is excerpt from his book "The Making of Modern Los Angeles")
