Symphony: Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall.

GEHRY, Frank.

$750.00

Item Number: 515

New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003.

First edition of this volume on Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Quarto, original cloth, illustrated throughout. Signed by Frank Gehry on the title page. Fine in a fine dust jacket. Preface by Deborah Borda. Introduction by Frank Gehry. With essays by Richard Koshalek and Dana Hutt, Carol McMichael Reese, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Michael Wood. Photography by Grant Mudford.

Frank Gehry has called Walt Disney Concert Hall a "living room" for the city of Los Angeles. Opened in Fall 2003 to rapturous praise, the hall beckons all comers with a billowing steel facade gleaming in the sunlight. Nearly 100 stunning color photographs and four concise, engaging essays by notable, mostly L.A.-based contributors make Symphony: Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall the ideal overview of this major civic and cultural landmark. Significant architectural, acoustical, urban design and civic leadership angles are all covered, including the checkered history of the project, stalled for years due to a ballooning budget, a complex decision-making process and a misguided attempt to relegate Gehry to a consulting role. In the end, as Michael Webb points out, the lag time proved valuable to Gehry, coinciding with his mastery of a new architectural language that he first explored in the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. The book is full of intriguing details.