One of architect Frank Gehry's long-standing wishes is finally coming true: a new concert hall in downtown Los Angeles that will complement his famous Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Preliminary work has begun on a $335 million expansion of the Gehry-designed Colburn School of the Performing Arts that includes a mid-sized concert hall that is expected to be in near-constant use for events hosted by students, professional artists and academics. .
“It's an opportunity to experiment a lot,” he said.
The long-planned Colburn School expansion will be the third Gehry-designed building at Bunker Hill, which already includes Disney Concert Hall and the Grand LA, a billion-dollar apartment, hotel and retail complex that designed for the New York mega-developer. .
Artist's rendering of the Colburn Center at 2nd and Hill streets in downtown Los Angeles.
(Courtesy of Frank O. Gehry & Gehry Partners)
The new Colburn structure is under construction on a former parking lot, on the corner of the current campus, at 2nd and Olive streets, just east of the Grand, creating three contiguous blocks of Gehry-designed buildings.
Colburn Center, the new building, will be modest in appearance compared to the other two, but it represents a significant leap for the Colburn School, which opened in Bunker Hill in 1998 and has about 2,000 students.
“The Colburn Center will be a game-changer, stepping up everything we do,” said Sel Kardan, president of the Colburn School.
The centerpiece of the expansion will be a 1,000-seat concert hall named after Pasadena philanthropists Terri and Jerry Kohl with a circular design intended to create intimacy between performers and audiences. The hall will include an orchestra pit and a stage large enough to house “the grandest works,” Kardan said, making it suitable for orchestra, opera and dance.
“There has always been a dream to have a place where our largest ensembles can play,” he said, such as the school's symphony orchestra, bands, youth string programs and children's choirs. “Currently, those programs are held off-site.”
Artist's rendering of the interior of the Colburn Center concert hall.
(Courtesy of Frank O. Gehry & Gehry Partners)
The size puts it in a sweet spot between the 2,265-seat Disney and the popular 415-seat Herbert Zipper Concert Hall already on the Colburn campus. The nearby Dorothy Chandler Pavilion seats about 3,200 guests. Even larger is LA Live's Peacock Theater, which seats 7,100.
“It's rarer to find a medium-sized place,” Kardan said. “They are extremely desirable and highly functional. “They also have enough seats to be really economically viable.”
Japanese acoustic engineer Yasuhisa Toyota will be the hall's acoustician, as he has been at all of Gehry's concert halls, starting with Disney Hall.
The Colburn Center will also duplicate the school's Trudl Zipper Dance Institute facilities, creating what the school called “one of the most comprehensive dance education complexes in Southern California.” The dance facilities will include a 100-seat dance theater and four professional-sized studios for dance instruction and rehearsal.
Architect Frank Gehry, left, and Colburn School President Sel Karden at Gehry Partners with a model of Gehry's design of an addition to the Colburn School, a private performing arts school in downtown Los Angeles.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
The center will include a rooftop garden large enough to host outdoor receptions and performances, as well as a ground-floor garden with a performance space that will be open to the public.
“I think it's very exciting that the school is going to expand,” said Mayor Karen Bass. “I think one of the things the school is known for is its incredible facilities and experience for young people. “It also provides access through scholarships, so it is a treasure for the city that is accessible to everyone.”
The Colburn School estimates it already attracts 10,000 people a week, including students attending classes, lessons and rehearsals. Others rent current spaces for presentations and conferences, helping to attract audiences who attend more than 500 presentations a year in the existing small venues.
The Colburn School has raised $315 million to date toward its $400 million goal for expansion, the school said. The campaign will cover an estimated $335 million in construction costs, as well as $65 million in endowment and operating costs to support the activities of the Colburn Center and the Colburn School.
The new building represents the near culmination of decades of efforts to rebuild Bunker Hill, a former residential neighborhood dating back to the city's early years that was razed in the 1960s to make way for “urban renewal,” a concept popular at the time that sought to remake blighted city blocks from scratch that displaced mostly poor people.
A rendering of the Hill Street side of the Colburn Center, which will include ground-level and rooftop gardens.
(Courtesy of Frank O. Gehry & Gehry Partners)
The first of the new developments was the Music Center performing arts complex, followed years later by office skyscrapers, some apartment buildings and cultural venues such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Colburn School of Music and the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. Disney Hall opened in 2003, followed 12 years later by the Broad museum.
Gehry's design for the Colburn Center was influenced by the decisions he had to make when creating a medium-sized concert hall within an existing warehouse in Berlin. The space was small, so he had to put some audience members on the same level as the musicians.
“The audience's feet are on the same ground as the orchestra,” he said. “I had no idea, but that made a big difference.”
Another facet of Berlin's Pierre Boulez Saal that Gehry will bring to Los Angeles is what he calls a floating balcony. In Berlin, it was not structurally possible to hook the balcony to the wall, so he suspended it in a way that gives the impression of floating above the action.
“At first, everyone said, 'Well, that's not going to work,'” Gehry said. “Finally, that became nirvana. So wherever we go now, everyone wants a floating balcony.”
A view of the Colburn Center east from Olive Street toward the concert hall entrance.
(Courtesy of Frank O. Gehry & Gehry Partners, LLP)
Hanging from the ceiling will be concrete sound clouds designed to improve acoustics and evoke a feeling of spaciousness. Gehry hopes that walkways can be added above the clouds that can be used in future performances.
“There's a lot of room up there,” he said. “Our hope is that once it's built we'll put walkways in there and bring in artists and performers so it becomes another space, part of the music.”
Upon completion in 2027, the Colburn Center should expand the Bunker Hill arts district, which is now limited primarily to Grand Avenue, he said.
“The body language of the building tries to be user-friendly, not to anticipate and become the centerpiece, but to be part of the feeling of the district and solidify it as a cultural district.”
