Designed by Epstein Joslin Architects, a firm based in Massachusetts, with acoustics by the famed Yasuhisa Toyota, the acoustician who did the sound design at Disney Hall, the Conrad contains within it the Baker-Baum Concert Hall, a traditional concert hall space with a capacity of nearly 500. Times classical music critic Mark Swed says the sound is “clear and noble,” but he tells me that he thinks it could use some fine-tuning.
The complex also has a smaller cabaret theater, the JAI, that accommodates 136 people, as well as an outdoor courtyard, also a performance site, dubbed the Wu Tsai QRT.yrd (because contemporary).
The new hall, unfortunately, sits at a rather uninspired site: in view of a luxury movie house called the Lot that consists of an ungainly grey box that has all the architectural charm of a big-box store. In response, the architects of the Conrad turned their building inward. The concert hall and its pleasant courtyard are screened from the street by a slatted terracotta-colored trellis that also serves as sunbreak. Unfortunately, this doesn’t leave much to admire in terms of facade. From the street, the slatted trellis comes off more as garden center than concert hall.
The aesthetics of the principal performance space, however, help make up for the exteriors. Walls are lined with vertical beams of Alaskan yellow cedar, evoking an abstracted tree pattern. And rather than clutter the building with a big lobby, the auditorium spills right out into the outdoor courtyard, a design that makes the most of fresh air.
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