GLARE AROUND THE WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL

A project that had major reflectance problems was the new Walt Disney Concert Hall(WDCH), designed by the famous architect Frank Gehry and owned by the County of Los Angeles, which has had to call in experts in an attempt to reduce the glare and thermal issues surrounding the building. The WDCH is partly a concert hall and partly a free-form sculpture. The above-grade portions include an office wing, clad in white limestone, several outdoor gardens and two outdoor amphitheaters, and two buildings clad in stainless steel. The stainless steel portion of the roof is often a freestanding curtain or skin. Much of the steel skin is curved and has convex and concave undulating surfaces. The bulk of the building is brushed stainless steel. Still, the Founders Room and the marquee for the California Institute of the Arts Roy and Edna Disney California Arts Theater (REDCAT) are made of polished stainless steel. In many ways, it is a state-of-the-art building, pushing the envelope of architecture.

In late June 2003, when the builders peeled off the film over the polished stainless steel, used to cover the steel during construction, the owners of condo apartments opposite began to complain. In mid-afternoon, the glare from the steel became so intense that they had to leave their balconies, close the curtains, and put on the air conditioning for three hours until the sun went off the face of the building. The temperatures in their apartments went up by up to 15 °C because of the added glare of the building. Gehry blamed the builders.

The county put a $ 6000 mesh over the steel as a stop-gap remedy, demonstrating a proactive approach to solving the problems neighbors of heat and light pollution caused by a building they commissioned. The County contracted Sapphos Environmental, who in turn contracted Schiler & Associates to study the impact of the building on the Promenade Towers, a commercial and residential building west of the WDCH. The thermal issues and the visual issues were addressed by Schiler & Associates separately, to be thorough. The former was tested with dataloggers and an infrared thermometer gun, the latter approached through a series of digitized photographs and computer simulation. Several solutions were tested.

Four different films were tested, two of which though acceptable in terms of diffusion, but not durable. One tested coated fabric was also similar. One version of sandblasting the surfaces was considered. The best solution was a combination of vibrational sanding, for coverage, followed by orbital sanding, for aesthetic reasons. The fabric solution was applied to the worst offending surfaces of the Founders Room and proved to be effective on all of the surfaces covered. The 2005 fix reportedly cost as much as $90,000.

Reference

Schiler & Valmont, Microclimatic Impact: Glare Around the Walt Disney Concert Hall, https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.729.6480&rep=rep1&type=pdf

https://www.thoughtco.com/gehry-responds-to-concert-hall-heat-178089