Los Angeles is inconceivable without Berlin and vice versa!

The two metropolises have had a particularly close connection to one another within the framework of their city partnership since 1967. The exhibition demonstrates this based on the example of two outstanding architects, whose concert houses are among the most famous in the world: Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, which opened in 2003, and Hans Scharoun’s Philharmonic, erected in divided Berlin in the 1960s.

Gehry and Scharoun never met each other, but the two of them are nevertheless very closely connected with one another by the icons of architecture that they designed. Scharoun’s Expressionist approach in Berlin provided the inspiration for Gehry’s deconstructivist design language in Los Angeles. The striving for a democratic architecture combined with the search for a sound that is perfect in form for the interior is something that both concert houses definitely have in common.

Rarely shown drawings, sketches, photographs, and models document the expressive power and impressiveness that radiates from the work of both architects.Besides the rarely seen, visionary watercolors of Scharoun from the Baukunstarchiv (Architecture Archive) of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, numerous exhibits from the office of Frank Gehry in Santa Monica that have up to now not been available to the public will be presented.

This exhibition has been organized by the Stiftung Brandenburger Tor in collaboration with the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.