AN ARCHITECTURAL ANCHOR THE PULL OF THE SPECTACULAR DISNEY HALL COULD HAVE A TRANSFORMING EFFECT ON DOWNTOWN.

Byline: Fred Shuster Staff Writer

WITH ITS CRISP glass walls, audaciously curved facade and icy sheets of polished steel suggesting billowing sails caught in a strong wind, the Walt Disney Concert Hall is a jarring sight as it rises out of a colorless area of downtown's Bunker Hill.

The city's latest landmark isn't lacking in attention. Weeks before the curtain goes up, architect Frank Gehry's block-long metallic structure is already leaving a profound mark on the city - and perhaps its collective unconscious.

Spectacular. Optimistic. Completely out of place. Those are some of the first impressions heard around Bunker Hill in recent days as construction barriers come down and musicians begin slipping in for rehearsals. They're the sort of comments that also greeted the inception of the likes of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Eiffel Tower, structures that sometimes got worse first-night reviews than Stravinsky's ``The Rite of Spring,'' but are now much beloved.

Whatever the fate of Disney Hall, its spirited exterior, shielding the elegant 2,265-seat auditorium within, is a dynamic presence in a particularly gray part of Los Angeles' notoriously ragged downtown.

``It almost doesn't matter whether anyone likes how it looks,'' says architect Eric Owen Moss, director of the Southern California Institute of Architecture. ``Because there are so many ways of seeing it. One of the great things about the hall is it suggests that whatever the limits to our lives are, there are still possibilities. It stretches the frame of reference, whether the viewer realizes it or not. It suggests a state of becoming. Some people will be more aware of this than others, but the structure suggests that a lot of things that haven't arrived yet are possible.

``It shows history doesn't have to be a matter of rerunning things that have already happened. It makes its case.''

As you walk through the place, you notice things like the floral pattern of the carpet, echoed in the staggered seating that spills over the Douglas fir-paneled auditorium. You hear the sharp scuffle of shoes on the shiny cedar floor of the venue, and you hope latecomers are kept in the foyer until a suitable break in the music. You gaze up at the massive skylights, and then see space between the sensual acoustic paneling and the shell of the building, a design, we find out later, that lends the music a hint of natural reverb.

And outside the venue, near the public gardens, you notice how Gehry demystifies the building itself by exposing openings in the structure's steel skin to reveal its very innards. ``Look at the Eiffel Tower,'' Moss said. ``It's all nuts and bolts and pieces of steel. Here, the state of being unfinished is part of Gehry's statement.''

The next step in the cultural history of Los Angeles begins Oct. 23, when the new home to the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Los Angeles Master Chorale opens to a crescendo of publicity. Sixteen years after the project was first imagined and at more than twice its projected cost, Disney Hall has landed - some would say blossomed - and with it comes hopes for a reinvigorated urban landscape that might give Southern California residents a compelling reason to navigate the pot holes on First Street.

``Ideally, this would be our Champs Elysee, a boulevard full of outdoor cafes, kiosks - a true pedestrian space,'' said Tridib Banerjee, a professor of urban and regional planning at USC. ``That's the kind of atmosphere missing in L.A. at the moment. It is an exciting building but, by accident or design, it's not very visible except from Grand Avenue. You can't see it from the freeway, so it doesn't add to the skyline. It will need must-see attractions because nothing will draw people downtown on its own.''

Grand Avenue may not be the Champs Elysee but it may have its Arc de Triomphe, thanks to Gehry. Those who've driven downtown recently have noticed the teeth-grinding repairs that have torn up the area in front of the Music Center from Temple to Second streets. The outcome, though, will be a two-block promenade with wider sidewalks, seasonal trees and native California palms.

``Los Angeles is a complicated city,'' Moss said. ``The fact that Disney Hall is downtown - if there is a downtown - starts to make that part of the city a legitimate place to offer what other parts of the city cannot. It allows one to make a distinction between a suburb, a periphery and a center, something that's not always been clear.''

The road to Gehry's long-awaited Disney Hall was long, treacherous and nearly had a very different ending. After initial funding more than 15 years ago, the on-off project stalled until 1998. ``We almost didn't get here,'' said Deborah Borda, the executive director of the L.A. Phil who previously held the same position with the New York Philharmonic. ``But we wanted to do this correctly, and it was worth the wait.''

The 293,000-square-foot Disney Hall embodies a mix of naturalistic tendencies, nontraditional materials and an unconventional imagination, inspired in part by venues in Berlin, Tokyo and Amsterdam. Along with the primary auditorium, the silvery complex includes two outdoor amphitheaters and an urban park and landscaped public gardens.

``Gehry is probably the beginning of the next sequence of events in architecture,'' Moss said. ``He's opened up enormous possibilities in a poetic and technological sense. This building is architectural poetry in concert with music. The other thing is, the building is not just for architects to decipher. This is a building about music and the performance of music and it wouldn't be too far a stretch to see it as a dialogue between the design of music and the design of architecture.''

Gehry (who collaborated on the hall with Japanese acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota, who worked with the architect to create the widely acclaimed new concert venue at Bard College in New York), uses nautical phrases such as ``wing on wing'' to describe the work, which he says was inspired both by the orchestra and the effect of wind on sails.

Such whimsy obscures the grueling toil that went into the long-delayed project. By the time Disney Hall was finally getting off the ground after a multiyear delay, Gehry had built the much-praised Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and the exuberant Experience Music Project in Seattle. One of the key elements in all three designs was a three-dimensional computer program created in France for airline construction.

``The computer allows you to draw configurations that are so complex that if one had to draw them by hand it would be almost impossible,'' Moss said.

``The computer allows you to build, slice and dice with stone, metal and concrete in ways that are intricate and complex. Gehry has bridged the gap between the most imaginative conjuring and what could plausibly be built. Before, you had the dreamers in one corner and the pragmatists in the other. He's been able, in general, to put the two camps together.''

It remains to be seen whether Gehry's bold design will become a destination in itself, like the Getty Center high atop Brentwood. But he has given the city plenty to think about - and thrown in a few curves in the process.

Fred Shuster, [phone]

fred.shuster(at)dailynews.

DISNEY HALL RIBBON CUTTING

Where: First Street and Grand Avenue.

When: 9 a.m. Oct. 20.

Tickets: No charge.

Ticket and schedule info

For the complete schedule and to order tickets for Disney Hall events, call [phone] or visit laphil.com. You can also order by fax at [phone] or by mail by writing Los Angeles Philharmonic, 151 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90012-3034.

Tickets can be purchased at the Disney Hall box office from noon to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday.

A limited number of $10 rush tickets for seniors and full-time students may be available at ticket windows two hours prior to performance.

Also, public radio KCRW-FM (89.9) is marking the opening of Disney Hall with a series of programs, including live broadcasts of the three inaugural galas, beginning Oct. 23.

CAPTION(S):

4 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) We take you inside the new Walt Disney Concert Hall as it's about to put its mark on L.A.

Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer

(2 -- 3) no caption (the inside of Walt Disney Concert Hall)

Andy Holzman/Staff Photographer

(4) no caption (the outside of Walt Disney Concert Hall)

John McCoy/Staff Photographer

Box:

Ticket and schedule info (see text)