Controlling chaos: Frank O. Gehry, the dean of Los Angeles architects, is expecting good reviews when his Walt Disney Concert Hall opens to the public later this year. (People).

FRANK Gehry, L.A.'s most prominent architect, has a lot to be excited about. Workers are putting the finishing touches on the shimmering, $274 million Walt Disney Concert Hall he designed, his l25-person firm has moved into a 40,000-square-foot facility near Playa del Rey, and he is designing a home for himself in Venice.

The 73-year-old architect long has been an active player in Los Angeles, where he says his vision has at times exceeded that of the city's leadership. A Gehry-led group's $300 million redevelopment plan for Grand Avenue has been shelved -- replaced with a more modest plan by DMJM+Harris and Rios Associates that was approved by the Music Center and L.A. County officials last October.

Gehry nearly walked away from the concert hall project in 1997. Budgeted for $110 million when Walt Disney's widow, Lillian made the initial $50 million contribution, construction was halted because of cost overruns. An Eli Broad-led fundraising effort brought it back to life.

Question: When you set out to design Disney Concert Hall, what were your goals?

Answer: My goal was to create the best concert hall in history. That's what the client wanted. There's an extraordinary discipline in creating spaces for music, but there's no formula for it -- you have to feel your way into it. You have to get emotionally into the culture of the musicians and the music.

Q: Do you feel you have succeeded?

A: There's a pretty nice response. People who have gone in feel it is more intimate than they expected, and the acousticians seem pleased at this point. I hope Disney Hall is an important building just because it would be good for the music community to have such an icon. Classical music needs a bump.

Q: Between the Concert Hall, Jose Rafael Moneo's Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels and Thom Mayne's Caltrans District 7 building, there's a greater emphasis on having premier architects design local public buildings. Why?

A: A lot of my architect friends blame it on (Guggenheim Museum) Bilbao (in Spain). I did Bilbao on time and at budget. The building paid for its hard costs the first eight months it was open, and it's been producing $40 million a year in city taxes. I think business people heard that and figured, "If they can do it, we can do it." In the end, (Disney Hall) got done because the business community and Eli Broad came in and helped. But it was rocky along the way.

Q: With the concert hall almost finished, there's more talk about an effort led by Broad to revive Grand Avenue. Do you think any comprehensive plan will take place?

A: Broad is an intelligent businessman, but he doesn't have an architectural vision. Maybe he thinks he does, but I'd be willing to debate him on that. It needs a plan from somebody who has talent.

Q: You've been in L.A. for 55 years. Can downtown he a true city center?

A: I would've thought there was a better plan to develop Wilshire Boulevard as a linear downtown. If you analyze the population three blocks on either side of Wilshire Boulevard for the whole 15 miles, you'll find the most ethnically and economically diverse population. That makes a city. If Wilshire Boulevard were developed with transportation and a central green people could jog, jitneys could go up and down, there could be cafes. I always thought that Disney Hall should be off of Wilshire Boulevard and that the Cathedral should be near MacArthur Park, closer to the renter of the Latino population.

Having said that, the die was cast by the Chandler family, who bought up land around the Times and committed with their friends to build a downtown.

Q: Do you spend a lot of time downtown?

A: Nope. I go to concerts. I used to go to hockey games at the Forum, but I stopped going because Staples was too dicey to reach in time for a 7:30 game. I bought a big TV and watch them from home.

Q: Thom Mayne told us last year that he thought the city is "amazingly ugly" and "annoying in its lack of resolve." Do you agree?

A: I don't think it's any uglier than any other city. Visually it represents democracy to me. Everybody could exercise their will, the zoning and planning was more freewheeling and the marketplace pretty much drove it. So you get aberrations that are chaotic, but they almost become beautiful in the end.

Q: Does the idea of being world-renowned get wearisome?

A: Everybody likes to be loved, and I'm not any different. And maybe in ways I'm not completely aware of, I probably worked to get it in some way. On the other hand, I approach every job with the same level of insecurity that I always have, which I think is healthy. I'm going to be 74, and all this happened to me from the time I was 60. If this had happened to me when I was 40, I might have been impressed with it, but since my work and life were pretty well-formed by the time I was 60, my insecurity patterns were still there so I don't pay much attention. I'm always surprised when anyone recognizes me.

Q: Any thoughts on younger local architects to watch out for?

A: One of the best guys to come out of here is Paul Lubowicki of lubowicki/Lanier Architects. His talent exceeds his bedside manner with a client, let's just say, so he's had a rough time of it, but his talents are great. I like Michael Maltzan, who does have a good manner with clients and is succeeding. Koning Eizenberg Architecture, Jon Drezner.

Q: Is your work still influenced by anyone else's work or are you at the point where you're working off your own vision?

A: You're always influenced by something. I'm inspired by paintings and sculpture, and not necessarily contemporary. Claus Sluter, a 15th century sculptor. Pierre Boulez's compositions have a relationship to bringing clarity out of chaos while still using the disparate pieces in conflict with each other.

That's what our world is -- chaos. You're not going to beat it so you might as well live with it and use it. That's what Boulez did, and I think that's what Esa-Pekka Salonen is doing in his compositions, and that's what I'm trying to do with mine.

Q: Do you have a favorite building in Los Angeles?

A: I always loved the (Los Angeles Central) Goodhue Library. I was always enamored with the old industrial buildings to the east of downtown Los Angeles -- they're all gone now. The cement factories, conveyer buckets, smokestacks. Extraordinary sculptures, by accident. There are periods in culture where certain things happen that are architecturally very interesting. This was L.A.'s period and I don't think many people saw that. I like the Cathedral inside much better than I do outside. When it lights up, it's very welcoming. It's a little on the cool side during the day but at night it comes to life.

Q: What's next? Are you still doing houses?

A: I'll do houses for close friends but not for the general public. They're too emotional and too difficult. The cost of running a house through an office like this is too expensive.

I'm building a wing for the Art Gallery of Ontario, which is the first museum I ever attended as a child and it's in a park near my grandmother's house. That has some emotional pull for me. It's about three years off. We're doing a project in Jerusalem for the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Museum of Biodiversity in Panama. A small concert hall at Bard College will open in April.

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Frank O. Gehry

Title: President

Organization: Gehry Partners

Born: Toronto, 1929

Education: Bachelor of Architecture, USC, 1954, attended Harvard University Graduate School of City Planning, 1957

Career Turning Point: Building his Santa Monica home, 1978

Most Admired Person: Psychologist Milton Wexler

Personal: Married, four children

Hobbies: Ice hockey, sailing