An official groundbreaking date for Gehry Partners' $335 million Colburn School campus expansion has been set in downtown Los Angeles nearly six years after the project, now dubbed the Colburn Center, was announced in unison with collaborators Nagata Acoustics and TheaterDNA.
Site preparations and other preliminary construction will begin soon on the project, which will yield a total of 100,000 square feet worth of new performance, rehearsal, and education spaces, including a 1,000-seat concert hall, 100-seat theater, and four new dance studios. A special groundbreaking ceremony will take place on April 5th. The Colburn School says they expect construction to reach “substantial completion” by the end of Q1 2027.
“This has been a long time in the making. The Colburn School expansion is a much-needed project for the community,” Frank Gehry said in a statement published on the school's website. “I hope that it will be well-used and well-loved by the students of the Colburn School and the other cultural institutions of Los Angeles. Our goal for this hall is that it will help strengthen the already robust classical music community here, solidifying Los Angeles’ leadership in this arena.”
Once it is realized, the building will stand as a bookend to Gehry’s 25-year-long re-envisioning of downtown that includes the Walt Disney Concert Hall and $1 billion The Grand mixed-used development, which opened directly across from the site in July of 2022.
Proponents have called it a transformational project with the potential to establish the downtown Grand Avenue corridor into an intentionally renown arts district. LA Mayor Karen Bass also commented it will add “an exciting contribution to the cultural and civic life of Downtown Los Angeles” at a critical time as the neighborhood is currently looking towards a new direction economically.
Other aspects of the project include a rooftop garden and landscaped public space at the intersection of Hill Street and 2nd Street.
Gehry Partners, LLP. is concurrently at work on several other projects around Los Angeles, including the SELA Cultural Center in South Gate and Ocean Avenue mixed-use development in Santa Monica. Another performing arts project, the proposed renovation of the Pietro Belluschi-designed Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, is being pursued by the firm with Mark Cavagnero Associates for a reported $100 million.
6 Comments
I know the courthouse is pretty new, but it best watch it's back. Gehry's coming...
I'm a huge Gehry fan, but they dropped the ball on the Grand. It seems like FOG sold out to the developer with a lackluster massing, cheap materials, and detailing. Hopefully, they put more love into the Colburn...
Also, wasnt the executive architecture of the Grand done by the Big G? Horrible project design-wise and construction-wise
I'm not sure, but the Grand looks like FOG knockoff...
No matter how good the architect is going in, anything developed by the Related Companies is going to be debased rubbish in the end. They love cheap and dumb.
Beautiful building design. Addresses much necessary "connector" building to the top of the hill where Gehry has his most celebrated L.A. building, the Disney Concert Hall and the new commercial mixed-use towers for profit. It provides pedestrian access to L.A.'s cultural playground with two major museums and from the hill to downtown Los Angeles. The way the Colburn School with glass dance studios would make to and fro more eventful and enjoyable.
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