Disney Hall: ‘Work of Art’ or Wet Cardboard?

Frank Gehry’s design for the proposed Walt Disney Concert Hall at the Music Center is an atrocious embarrassment. When your critic, Leon Whiteson, termed it an “architectural masterpiece,” I thought he was either kidding or out of his mind. Far from “affirm(ing) Los Angeles’ coming of age as the West Coast’s major cultural center,” Gehry’s pointless hodgepodge of “eccentric shapes” will confirm L.A.’s reputation as the source of architectural silliness.

How on earth can our supervisors and Redevelopment Commission take this “deconstructionist” trash seriously? Comparing it to a “galleon in full sail” is an insult to the eye-pleasing Opera House in Sydney, Australia. Disney Hall resembles upside down cardboard boxes inhabited by the homeless. They should call it “Homeless Hall.” Given its location, the comparison is sadly apt.

Civic buildings do not have to be marble-clad cubes. However, the people of this city deserve much better and, at these prices, so does Mrs. Disney.

ROBERT M. SCHWARTZ, Los Angeles