This is the Walt Disney Concert Hall located in Los Angeles, California. The architecture was designed by Frank O. Gehry, and the acoustics by Yasuhisa Toyota. It was opened in October 23, 2003. When opened, the Los Angeles Philharmonic practiced with an audience of celebrities. They were all wondering what the acoustics would be like. As the conductor was directing the music, he was startled, as he realized there were wrong notes in some of the performer's music. The orchestra had played this piece multiple times, but had never been a concert hall with good enough acoustics for the wrong notes to be heard among all the rest of the instruments. The concert hall, (which seated 2,265 people) was designed to perfection.
It had an enormous cost: 130 million dollars, with a parking garage that cost 110 million. Much of the money was donated by Walt Disney's family and the Walt Disney Company. The organ was designed by Gehry. He was working with a person, Manuel Rosales, who told him whether or not the design would actually work; Gehry was coming up with outlandish designs, such as all the pipes upside down, and the keyboard console at the top! Finally he toned down his ideas, and came up with the design seen above. Some of the pipes are metal, and some are actually wood. The organ has a total of 6,125 pipes!
After the concert hall was opened, people living in apartment houses across from it were complaining about intense heat, causing them to run their air conditioning very high and as a result, spending a lot of money on the air conditioning bill. The reason of the heat was that the curved metal surfaces of the Walt Disney Concert Hall was directing sunlight straight at the apartments. When the temperature was measured in the area, the temperature got as high as 140 degrees! The fix the problem, Gehry had research done which figured out the panels that reflected the light, and had these tiles sanded to a duller sheen:
In all, this concert hall by Frank O. Gehry is a very interesting building. It is now the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
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