Disney Hall Barrage

Even the grainy L.A. Times photo of the Disney Hall model made me gasp (“A Project in Need of Greater Harmony,” June 24); what a magnificent structure, soaring upward, elevating the viewer as great music elevates the listener.

What is there to debate? Of course Frank Gehry must guide his masterpiece through its completion. Who else could?

My husband and I are happy to wait for the designs to be properly executed and to one day see Gehry’s Disney Hall built exactly as the eminent architect intended.

PEPPER EDMISTON

Pacific Palisades

As a designer of performing arts facilities and a licensed contractor (with a graduate degree in theater), I am continually amazed at the barrage of articles concerning the Disney Hall project. But the articles themselves may be wide of the mark.

When Gehry’s design for Disney Hall was selected, it seemed incredibly exciting and adventurous--suitable for 21st century Los Angeles. Today, though, from a late-’90s perspective, it seems overwrought. And if the Disney Hall is viewed in the context of its cousin in Bilbao, Spain, it even appears derivative (regardless of the Disney-Bilbao timeline). Perhaps this would be an opportune time to pause and ask whether we still have the right design as a monument to Walt Disney and for our city.

One thing architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff has exactly right: Putting a developer in charge of overseeing a structure as complicated as Disney Hall would be a tremendous mistake. That kind of misjudgment could only be compounded by awarding the bid to a design-build contractor, one who would then receive a rubber stamp from a captive or “in-house” architect. Talk about letting the fox into the henhouse!

MICHAEL VINE

Westlake Village