Frank Gehry's Disney Concert Hall

This past Spring I was selected by the School of Architecture and Allied Arts to receive the Richard Campbell Travel Scholarship, a $5,000 stipend based on a proposal I wrote in January. I spent a small fraction of the stipend this summer on a visit to L.A. where I spent some time in Gehry's Disney Concert Hall and Rafael Moneo's Our Lady of Angels Cathedral. Below are some sketches from the concert hall.

[pastel sketch of BP Hall on vellum]

The subject of my proposal for the scholarship was the relationship of architecture to writing, so I started recording some of the experience in that medium. Gehry's building felt like it was the paper music is written on - the sound, or the performance felt inevitable in its space. Metaphor is obviously of interest to me, particularly its use during the design process and as a means of communication in presentation. 

[pastel sketch of path behind Garden Pavillion, Children's Amphitheatre]

One thing was certain after this trip; it is impossible for me to make an opinion on a building without visiting it (or in this case, on an architect). This was a building that I stepped inside and immediately felt overcome with emotion, something I have experienced in only one other place (Ando's Times Building in Kyoto). Gehry is not given much credit at the U of O, in fact I don't know if i've ever seen slides of the interior of any of his buildings. I guess I had come up with some idea of who he was or what his work stood for, and therefore did not think twice about visiting any of his projects. Thanks to Howard Davis' suggestion of adding the concert hall to my itinerary, I realize it was superficial and unjustified, and a building should only be judged through one's experience of that building.