Downtown Los Angeles was considered
for many years to be afterthought. Like
most of America, all the glamour and the development it had gotten lost in the
background of Hollywood and the suburbs of L.A. County. Pasadena, Venice,
Malibu, they were all better places than downtown. Carmaggedon be damned.
Of course, it’s all cyclical, and once the 1990s came to
downtown Los Angeles, people with money came like vultures ready to create a
new modern area that would satisfy their needs once people realized that the
downtown area could be more than the place where USC could expand yet
again. And so, Lillian Disney, widow of
Walt, came with $50 million dollars in hand to create a concert hall close to
the nascent area, now clusterfuck known as “L.A. Live”
That concert is obviously an
oddball compared to say, the Lincoln center. It has curves, and it seems to be
made of aluminum that seems to scream sculpture, instead of a music hall. If looked from across the street, it might as
well fall from windstorm.
But the concert hall seems to have
been built almost to perfection. It is more art than anything else, and its
insides feel rather anticlimactic. This
is a place where architectural nerds flow all the time just to see its outsides,
just to say that they were in a building that was designed by Frank Gehry. Sure you can go to an actual concert at the
hall, but why would you? Staring at it is enough reward.
