Lobby Cafe at Walt Disney Concert Hall

The Lobby Bar and Café at the Walt Disney Concert Hall is a small project with a large amount of respect for its environment. The use of glass as a material was selected for its unique qualities of transparency, reflectivity and variable light densities. The stacked glass symbolically gestures invisibility while the reflectivity of the top sheet visually transposes an image of the lobby onto the surface itself. This approach allowed the designer to create a monolithic, stand-alone piece worthy of recognition without abandoning a notion of symbiosis with the Concert Hall lobby. The LA Philharmonic Bookstore, with its stacked plywood shelving units, and the Concert Hall Café, with its bands of etched glass, were both considered and responded to as well. The Lobby Bar design expanded this already established language and material aesthetic which contributes to the experience of visitors as they encounter one design element to the next.

Status: Completed 2003

Project Type: Hospitality; Building Type: Tenant Improvement; Size: N/A

Location: Los Angeles, CA

Partners: Hagy Belzberg, Brock DeSmit

Project Team: Lauren Zuzack