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Frank Gehry talks to the LA Times about his ever-expanding vision for downtown Los Angeles

2024-04-12T17:50:00-04:00

Frank Gehry has provided some interesting comments to the LA Times to coincide with last week’s groundbreaking of the new Colburn Center in downtown Los Angeles, a vital lynchpin for the city’s post-COVID economic rebound.

Speaking on the record for an article to the paper’s business section, the 95-year-old Walt Disney Concert Hall designer told reporters about his still-expanding vision for the Grand Avenue corridor and beyond. The neighborhood has been a bit of an obsession of his since the end of the 1990s. Now, he says, "we still have work to do," adding that Little Tokyo, the Arts District, and other neighborhoods near Bunker Hill can and should have their own culture-backed transformations performed to facilitate a revival pushed by LA Mayor Karen Bass and other civic leaders.

The Broad museum also recently announced its own $100 million expansion plans. Our February preview of the new $335 milli...

Frank Gehry's Colburn Center expansion breaks ground in LA

2024-04-10T17:06:00-04:00

Work on Frank Gehry’s new Colburn School expansion has commenced in downtown Los Angeles toward its eventual completion after Q1 2027. His firm Gehry Partners celebrated the groundbreaking with school officials last Friday, April 5th, in sight of his previous Walt Disney Concert Hall and The Grand designs at the intersection of Hill and 2nd Streets.

Nagata Acoustics and TheaterDNA are leading the interior fit-outs for the extension, which will yield a total of 100,000 square feet of new spaces for performance and rehearsals. A 1,000-seat concert hall, 100-seat theater, and four new dance studios will be added through the construction, along with a new public garden that serves as a gateway to the rest of downtown. Costs for the project are reported to be $335 million.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Colburn School (@colburnschool)

Gehry said in a previous statement: “I hope that it will be well-used and well-loved by the students of the Colburn School ...

Frank Gehry's transformative Colburn School expansion will break ground in April

2024-02-20T19:14:00-05:00

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.

View from Hill Street West towards the dance school entrance, dance studios, and public garden. Image: Courtesy of Frank O. Gehry & Gehry Partners, LLP

View East from Olive Street towards the entrance to the concert hall. Image: Courtesy of Frank O. Gehry & Gehry Partners, L...

Frank Gehry reveals an upgraded design for Downtown LA's transformational Colburn Center

2022-03-16T21:27:00-04:00

The musical fabric of Los Angeles is about to get a significant boost from one of its most famous creative backers after Frank Gehry’s updated plans for the Colburn School were made public for the first time in a live-streamed ceremony at its downtown campus earlier today.

Renderings reveal a 100,000-square-foot expansion of the school’s existing facilities into what will be called the Colburn Center, a dynamic new set of interlocking performance venues and public spaces that will couple with a generous set of scholarship programs to further enhance the 72-year-old school’s educational and artistic offerings.

The project is an integral part of the architect's mission to transform the Downtown Los Angeles landscape beginning with his iconic Walt Disney Concert Hall up the street and culminating with his latest, directly adjacent mixed-use addition called The Grand. Gehry worked together with longtime collaborators Michael Ferguson and Yasuhisa Toyota of Nagat...

Gehry Partners unveils renderings of stalled concert hall in Downtown Los Angeles

2020-09-08T15:56:00-04:00

Gehry Partners has unveiled a set of renderings for the firm's $310 million Colburn School concert halls, a pair of performance spaces that aim to add a public arts component to Gehry's forthcoming $1 billion mega-development, The Grand.

The renderings, published by The Los Angeles Times, come as construction on The Grand moves passed the halfway mark and, less cheerfully, as fundraising for the concert halls hits a major roadblock as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Project backers with the Colburn School tell The Los Angeles Times that development on the project is currently stopped amid these funding issues.

Rendering highlighting the Colburn concert halls with The Grand situated in the background. Image courtesy of Gehry Partners.

The multi-faceted project is marked by a pair of performance halls that are meant to engage with public spaces surrounding the development both visually and through sound.

Rendering of the proposed concert hall highlighting the indoor-outdoor catwalk...

Axis of Gehry: Colburn School in Downtown L.A. reveals architect for campus expansion

2018-03-14T21:44:00-04:00

Frank Gehry's impact on the Grand Avenue cultural corridor in Downtown Los Angeles keeps growing: 15 years after completing the iconic Walt Disney Concert Hall, and with the enormous The Grand mixed-use development right across the street finally coming to realization, Gehry was today also selected to design the campus expansion of the Colburn School, an internationally renowned institution teaching music, dance, and drama.

Colburn School campus. Photo: Philip Pirolo

The existing Colburn School campus, built by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates in 1998, is located at the corner of Grand Avenue and 2nd Street, flanked by the Arata Isozaki-designed Museum of Contemporary Art building and The Broad by DS+R.

The campus expansion site, only a stone's throw away on 2nd Street between South Olive and Hill Streets, will be transformed from a parking lot on a hill side into a new state-of-the-art multi-venue building. Featuring a 1,100-seat concert hall, a 700-seat studio theater, and a 100-...