The hall

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.