It's iconic, stunning, impressive, in a lot of movies, etc… but did you know that the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles is an example of deconstructive architecture that shows the avant-garde tendency to disturb traditional architectural values of harmony, unity, and stability through the use of skewed, distorted and impure geometry?
Didn’t think you did…
Here’s what that sentence actually means:
Instead of making a sleek, clean-lined boxy building, Toronto-born architect Frank Gehry took apart the traditional square shape and turned it into curves, angles, and distorted shapes.
The result is a mind-blowing space that has you scratching your head and saying in awe, "How did he do that?"
The Walt Disney Concert Hall is an enormous gravity defying sculpture that’s heaving and billowing stainless steel walls resemble a ship adrift on a rough sea.
Gehry has created art galleries, museums, and music venues in similar deconstructed styles all over the world, and he has said that he creates such impressive spaces because he believes that artists “want to be in great buildings.”
Interestingly, the panels of the organic $274 million (the majority of which was donated by Walt’s widow, Lillian Disney) concert hall were originally a lot more reflective, but after nearby condo owners complained about the increased heat as a result of the sun reflecting off of the surfaces, they were sanded down to the dull shine that we see today. (In my opinion, they are still pretty darn reflective.)
When I was first asked by some fellow foreigners in South Korea if I wanted to get naked in a public bathhouse and sauna on my first weekend in the country, I looked at them like they were nuts.
Somehow though, they managed to talk me into it (I blame severe jet lag), and it was one of the best decisions that I have ever made.