With its soaring arches and bony ribs, Santiago Calatrava's design for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra might have become the emblem of Atlanta — it's Eiffel Tower, Space Needle or Empire State Building.
In moving to a new site with more modest aspirations, should the ASO — and by extension, Atlanta — have given up on its world-class dream?
Iconic architecture for music has transformed cities. The brilliant and indefatigable Danish architect Jorn Utzon created a symbol for Australia in his Sydney Opera House.
A high percentage of visitors that admire it are impressed enough to attend a performance, according to officials.
There's not an arts organization that wouldn't kill for that.
Frank Gehry's Disney Hall in Los Angeles took 17 long years to build, but has terrific acoustics and is an enormous success. It breathed life into a downtown that had resisted numerous earlier renewal efforts.
The angular 2007 Oslo Opera has become a beloved three-dimensional playground on the waterfront. Its image is everywhere.
Cities everywhere dream of such glories, but they cannot be willed into being. Leadership, tenacity and good timing were essential to the success of all three.
Utzon's aspirations for Sydney, for example, so outstripped Australia's cash, patience and technical ability that he was fired, and the auditoriums were severely compromised by another architect.
The costs and complexities of big-name architecture have fueled a revulsion against architectural spectacles in today's miserable economy — including the engineering acrobatics Calatrava is famous for.
Spectacle, in great boulevards and grand buildings, is one of the great pleasures of city living. Still ASO's leadership looks wise for recognizing that the times are simply not right for Calatrava's design.
A concert hall is technically demanding to begin with, and Calatrava confected an exterior of baroque splendor and complexity. Huge winglike areas of glass would hinge open out of one of a pair of inward sloping ovals, topped by a beaklike arched truss. Such large-scale customization is more common in Europe.
Few American contractors have the technical capacity to build anything more complicated than a strip mall, putting the ASO at risk of huge cost overruns.
On the other hand, a new site and a new architect should not be a license to lowball. That's how Atlanta got the characterless Woodruff Center and the lifeless Symphony Hall.
Orchestra halls are expensive, but they don't wear out, and the good ones only increase in stature over time.
Knowing how a hall can truly fit in the culture of Atlanta, officials can consider what's essential in the design.
Atlanta should seek a new design that's extroverted, not afraid to be theatrical. The strange and idiosyncratic Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis by the Paris architect Jean Nouvel builds anticipation from the moment patrons enter, urging the audience to leave the world behind and engage the performance.
New York's Lincoln Center looks like three dour mausoleums in the daytime. At night, the plaza they share swirls to life as patrons stroll around the fountain and gaze over the crowds from the balconies.
It's just intermission, but it is an unforgettable New York experience whether you've bought tickets or are just passing by.
What's called the "classic shoebox" — halls that emulate Boston's beloved orchestra hall – can be less expensive (as in Nashville's 2006 Schermerhorn Symphony Center).
They also have an old-fashioned formality that can put off audiences. Calatrava's design wrapped the stage in so-called vineyard tiers of seats, which locates the audience close to the action with a more a more involving relationship to the players. Disney Hall uses the vineyard plan, too, and it's thrilling.
How do you know when a design is good? You should long to enter. If the auditorium makes you salivate, if you can't wait for the performers to stroll on stage, the architecture is doing its job.
James S. Russell is the American architecture critic for Bloomberg News in New York.
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