Customer Reviews

Iron: Erecting the Walt Disney Concert Hall

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There were only a few architectural drawings of The Disney in the back of the book: most of this photographic tour de force deals with the iron works, the skeleton of the building. After paging through this entire book, which is on display for sale at the historic Lummis Home off the Avenue 43 exit of the Pasadena Freeway, I had a new appreciation of the new Disney Concert Hall, which I had photographed under contruction against the backdrop of a thunderstorm.

Garcetti takes you close to the massive lattice of ironwork that underlies the curvaceous and apparently delicate hall. "Lattice" , "Skeleton", "frame", none of these words capture in their sense of mere adumbration the massiveness of the iron underneath. Can I say it simply? There's really a lot. Just what you're looking for in a book entitled "Iron."

Garcetti does a great job of capturing the workers, too, with many closeup shots of them as people that really bring out their essential happiness. There's a sign of their union hall, and the wonderful holiday shot of the christmas tree being lifted up to the top on a huge steel beam.

Also shown are some huge ironworking tools.

If you're fascinated with the state of the art in iron-based construction today, I'd say this book is for you.

Something else to remember -- once a building is built, you'll never be able to take photographs of it under construction again. It may sound trivial to say it that way, but after reading this book you probably won't think so.

In his foreword, Frank Gehry calls ironworkers "the forgotten heroes of architecture," and this book celebrates their courage and skill. Nobody who saw the structural frame going up on Grand Avenue will forget its raw beauty, but most of the bones were covered in a shimmering skin a year before the hall opened. Garcetti, better known as the former DA of Los Angeles County, has captured the physicality of the work in his photos, and in the words of the people who did it. Their pride and solidarity are inspiring. (Michael Webb is the book reviewer for LA Architect magazine.)

Michael Webb is arcitectural critic for a magazine owned by the publisher of Garcetti's book. Fair's fair.
This is a nice book, but the photography is well, mediocre. The building is astounding.

I bought this for my engineer friend, but when I received it, I realized that the book is very light on technical info and could not give it to him. This book is more for the general public than for someone who really wants to know more about the actual structure. I found the images to be more centered around the men who erected the steel rather than the actual structure. Overall, the book seemed more topical than a case study on the Disney Concert Hall, and when you are talking about such a intricate structure, it seems like an injustice to not fully cover the topic.