A Project in Need of Greater Harmony

Will Frank Gehry get to finish Disney Hall? That is the question that has tormented the city’s cultural elite since the much-admired architect threatened to resign from the downtown concert hall project, convinced that overzealous deal-makers would not allow him to adequately complete his vision.

Disney Hall officials claim that they would never do anything to jeopardize the design. They insist that they want to keep the designer involved in the process--one way or another. Yet crucial details of the plan, both aesthetic and structural, remain unresolved. And in the rush to see the project built, many of those details risk being handled in ways that would dull the building’s final impact.

Disney Hall needs to be an architectural monument worthy of the city’s growing cultural ambitions. To serve the building’s dual purpose--as the new home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and as a downtown landmark--Disney Hall must be acoustically, structurally and aesthetically whole. Only Gehry can guarantee that. The next meeting between the architect and concert hall officials has not yet been scheduled but is imminent; without the architect’s continued involvement, the city could end up with a faux Gehry.

To most, it will be surprising to learn that Gehry’s vision is still incomplete. The first Disney Hall committee paid the architectural firm Dworsky Associates and various subconsultants a total of about $18 million to translate Gehry’s design into plans that would be used to

build the building. (Gehry was paid $5 million for the design itself.) Dworsky Associates and their subconsultants churned out 1,315 sheets of working drawings. Yet anywhere from 10% to 25% of the drawings remain incomplete.

The reasons date back to December 1992, when construction began on the garage that would become a blunt visual reminder of the project’s unraveling. Various revisions were proposed even as the team prepared to begin construction: A hotel was included in the plan and then dropped. The concert hall’s form was reconfigured to make it more acoustically sound. Yet the original concert hall committee pressed forward. Determined to stick to an imaginary timetable, the project was put on a fast track--a practice often used on more conventional projects in which architects complete drawings as they are needed while construction rushes ahead.

Many now dispute whether or not that pace contributed to the project’s near demise. Whatever the reason, costs began to spiral out of control. More changes were made in the design to save money. In November 1994, construction plans abruptly stopped.

That left the drawings incomplete. Questions about interior finishes and materials still remain unresolved. In some cases, walls are represented in wood on one drawing, in plaster on another. New structural codes established after the Northridge earthquake have not been taken into account. Most worrisome for the Philharmonic, some of the acoustical details are not set. These are not trifles. Nor is this a meaningless crusade by a high-strung creative type. Such details are key to the architecture’s success.

Eli Broad--now the project’s primary fund-raiser--has set next Tuesday as a deadline to get a preliminary guaranteed maximum price from potential builders for the concert hall. According to Broad’s scheme, a final builder will be selected one month later who will be responsible for keeping the project on budget and on time. It is up to the builder to select an executive architect, who will be responsible to complete the drawings, as well as set a final guaranteed maximum price, all within four months. The plan leaves only a month or two to finalize the design.

In a more standard arrangement for a building of this complexity, the architect--Gehry--and concert hall officials would select the contractor together. That would give Gehry the leverage needed to protect his design. Broad’s design-build process is typically used for more conventional, industrial buildings, which use standard detailing. Broad believes that his scheme will both ensure that the project gets done quickly and efficiently, and still allow the builder to resolve any vagaries in the drawings as they come up, with Gehry as consultant.

Gehry’s building, of course, is far from standard. Unlike even many of the most experimental firms, he works intuitively. There is no prototypical Gehry solution, as there might be in the work of a less idiosyncratic architect. Gehry’s design decisions are impossible to mimic.

On the other hand, as the driving force behind the fund-raising effort, Broad has a responsibility to those who have committed to fork over the money to build the building. And although he became involved with the project a year ago, Broad was justifiably reluctant to start work on the drawings until the money was in place. But his determination to get the project done should include rational control of what we are getting.

There is a compromise on the table. Gehry has offered to assemble a clear design development package before the project goes out to bid, to ensure that the design is finished before contractors set a price and begin on the working drawings. That would mean a delay of several months in fixing a final cost for the building. It would also mean that the builder would have accurate drawings on which to base his guaranteed estimate.

Gehry says he would rather complete all the drawings himself. (He points out that his firm was responsible for all the architectural drawings at the nearly complete Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, by all accounts a budgetary success.) So far, Broad and the Disney committee have made no decision.

But the bigger issue is what the role of an architect should be. The task of the architect is to imagine and form space. The task of Disney Hall officials is to set clear guidelines and a rational budget. The success--both in terms of design and cost--of Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao was a lesson of what can be accomplished when an architect is told: “Do what you do best.”

Like it or not, creating good design is a delicate, tense process; architects struggle to form an attitude about a site, to mold a coherent composition. When it works, each decision becomes inevitable: A view echoes an earlier path; each gesture speaks to the whole vision. That is what separates art from thoughtless form.

For Broad, perhaps the point is difficult to grasp. In 1989, he hired Gehry to design his dream home. Early on, the two fought, and Broad completed the design himself. It was Broad--working with a contractor--who chose the final materials, refined the forms, worked out the landscaping. Seen today, the results are clunky. The house, perched heavily on a terraced Brentwood hillside, reads like a sketchy model of the real thing--there is the hint of something there, but it never reveals itself.

Broad is not the owner of Disney Hall and will not have such proprietary leeway. Nonetheless, the current rush seems brash given the project’s muddled past. It was impatience that brought down Disney Hall more than two years ago.

Gehry has created a great design--balanced, exuberant, generous. It is also incomplete. Broad knows money. He is no architect. Let the designer do his job.