Why Not St. Disneyana’s a Place to Play and Pray? : Architecture: Combining the concert hall and the cathedral makes economic sense, once a few details are worked out.

If media coverage is the measure, downtown Los Angeles’ two most vexing problems are discovering where to raise roughly $150 million to cover the shortfall in financing Disney Hall and discovering where to spend a $45-million endowment earmarked to replace St. Vibiana’s Cathedral. Oddly enough, both problems may have the same solution.

Beginning economics students are told that two parties will successfully conclude a deal if what each brings to the bargaining table is something that makes the other better off afterward. So it is in this case. Cardinal Roger Mahony has the money that Harry Hufford needs, and in return Disney Hall’s CEO can offer the cardinal the site and plans that he needs. A deal is struck to the benefit of both. Behold, the new Cathedral of our Lady of the Angels and the new Disney Hall could become one and the same. Farfetched? Not at all.

To be sure, the proposal raises difficult questions that will need to be answered. For example, are the two very different uses compatible?

Perhaps surprisingly, liturgical and performing arts events have a long history of coexistence under the same roof. The cathedral of the Middle Ages served both civic and ecclesiastical functions. Secular musical performances were commonplace. Recalling that tradition, churches have once again thrown open their doors to various secular arts. Although the Eucharist remains the centerpiece of worship, the liturgy at New York’s mammoth Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine has been enriched with African chants and Zen meditation, dance and an aerialist’s high-wire acts.

Around the world, major concert series are played in great churches. Under the aegis of Los Angeles’ Da Camera Society, leading chamber groups play in architecturally and acoustically rich religious buildings. Older Angelenos will recall that Philharmonic Auditorium, for decades home of our symphony orchestra, was actually a Baptist church.

A second question is whether one design can serve two functions. As Cardinal Mahony has pointed out, Vatican II reorganized the liturgy spatially. The reforms mandated a physical rearrangement that brings the liturgical drama from a distant stage into the very center of the worship space, where the people sit, stand or kneel. That’s exactly what the cardinal wants for his new building, and Frank Gehry has unknowingly but perfectly anticipated Mahony’s wish in his Disney Hall design. Gehry would remove the orchestra from its traditional site on an isolated stage and thrust it into the room, surrounded on all sides by seating for the audience.

Given Gehry’s scheme and the Vatican II changes, the differences between a space suitable for a church service and a concert have narrowed, yet designing a building that is sufficiently flexible to accommodate both liturgy and performance will still require a creative response, one that goes beyond mechanical devices that, at the touch of a button, will obscure religious fixtures or quickly whisk away an altar to make room for 100 musicians, and vice-versa. Barton Myers’ innovative design for the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts demonstrates how flexibility can be gained by simply moving large walls that not only alter the size and configuration of space, but also its “feel.”

Architecture’s “Oscar,” the Pritzker, has been awarded to both Gehry and Jose Rafael Moneo, the cardinal’s architect. For two titans, each bringing to the drawing board very different design philosophies, to work together on designing a cathedral as a concert hall (and a concert hall as a cathedral) would represent a real test of patience and goodwill. Nonetheless, the task is surely not insuperable.

Churches rank among the most underutilized of all urban spaces, busy on Sunday mornings and an evening or two, and mostly empty for much of the rest of the week. Fortunately, the principal Christian services are held at times when concert halls are empty, and orchestras usually play at times different from traditional church services. The merger of church and concert hall should create few scheduling conflicts and represent a real gain in land-use efficiency.

To return to the overriding issue: what the parties gain from the proposed collaboration. In return for its check, the archdiocese becomes co-owner of a splendid, highly visible building costing an estimated $250 million plus a parking structure costing twice the total cathedral budget. All told, the $45-million donation leverages a $350-million investment.

Although the county relinquishes some ownership rights to the hall, its budget shortfall shrinks by about a third. More important, however, Mahony’s generosity would go far toward restoring much-needed confidence in the long-stalled Disney project, a confidence sufficient to pry loose resources from the moneyed Los Angeles community needed to fill the remaining funding gap.

The most difficult problems may be the less tangible ones. They have to do with the merger of two hierarchies, each with enormous political power and each with its own agenda. If both recognize the merits of collaboration and recognize too that one’s problem is the other’s solution, then a place to pray and play may save the day.