The Colburn Center, Frank Gehry's last building for downtown Los Angeles, will open on 25 September 2027, the Colburn School announced on 6 October 2026. The 100,000 sq ft (about 9,300 m²) expansion holds the 1,000-seat Terri and Jerry Kohl Hall, built in the round, and a new Dance Center. It is rising beside the school's Grand Avenue campus, near Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Key takeaways
- An opening date at last. A gala concert in Kohl Hall on 25 September 2027 is followed on 26 September by a community day with a ribbon-cutting and free performances. Together they start a week-long festival.
- A hall in the round. Kohl Hall seats 1,000 around its stage, with an orchestra pit, a floating balcony, natural light and acoustic clouds above the stage.
- A pink metal skin. The cladding carries "Pink Kandi", a custom finish that Gehry Partners developed with Sherwin-Williams, Archinect reports.
- Dance and gardens. A Dance Center with four studios and a 100-seat studio theatre sits alongside a garden at street level and another on the roof.
- A Gehry district. Colburn says the expansion will create the largest concentration of Gehry-designed buildings in the world.
What happened: the Colburn Center sets its date
Colburn announced the date on 6 October 2026. The building is due for substantial completion in summer 2027, and the full 2027–28 season will be announced in the spring, MyNewsLA reported. The Dance Center opens first, in August 2027, with the new academic year. The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra will make Kohl Hall its downtown home from the 2027–28 season. Its first concert there is expected to include the premiere of a new fanfare by John Williams.
Construction began with a groundbreaking on 5 April 2024. The steel structure topped out on 25 July 2025 and the concrete on 30 September 2025, which Colburn called the halfway point, according to the school's press room. The addition costs $337 million, the Los Angeles Times reported.
"We are excited to announce the opening date for our extraordinary new facilities, which the late Frank Gehry designed for us," said Sel Kardan, Colburn's president and chief executive. Gehry, the 1989 Pritzker laureate, died in 2025 at 96.
The Colburn Center's design: Kohl Hall in the round
The Colburn Center is not one block. Its glass and opaque volumes interlock and step down along the site, joined by a glass-enclosed entrance, Archinect writes. Over them goes Pink Kandi, a fluoropolymer resin finish modelled on high-gloss car paint. Disney Hall is silver; its younger neighbour will be pink.
The hall is the heart of the building. Kohl Hall seats 1,000 around the performers, and its stage and pit serve orchestra, dance, opera and jazz. The acoustic clouds over the stage are steel shells packed with concrete, made in the Netherlands by a firm with a history of building steel ship hulls. The acoustician is Yasuhisa Toyota of Nagata Acoustics, who has worked on all of Gehry's concert halls since Disney Hall; TheatreDNA is the theatre consultant.
Frank's passion was bringing the audience closer to the performers.
The Dance Center becomes the home of the school's Trudl Zipper Dance Institute. Its studio theatre carries a roof garden, and a second garden opens at street level at 2nd and Hill streets. The two gardens are a generous gesture to the street.
Why it matters
Los Angeles has large halls and small ones, and little in between. Disney Hall seats 2,265, and Kardan called Kohl Hall's size "the missing piece of the venue puzzle", the Los Angeles Times reported. Colburn expects to use the hall more than 200 times a year, which makes it a working room for students as much as a showcase.
The Colburn Center also completes a set. With Disney Hall and The Grand nearby, it gives downtown what Colburn calls the largest concentration of Gehry-designed buildings in the world. It continues a run of cultural building in Los Angeles that this year brought the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art to Exposition Park. It lands in a week when Bilbao, the city Gehry's Guggenheim made famous, opened the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum extension by Foster + Partners.
The test will be the street. Gehry's best Los Angeles buildings work as public places as much as venues. A pink building with a glass entrance and a garden at street level has the tools to do the same on its corner of downtown.
What's next
- Spring 2027: the full 2027–28 season is announced.
- Summer 2027: substantial completion.
- August 2027: the Dance Center opens with the 2027–28 academic year.
- 25–26 September 2027: the gala concert, then the community celebration and the start of the opening festival.
More Los Angeles stories are in the Journal's Los Angeles tag and its News section.
FAQ
What is the Colburn Center?
The Colburn Center is a 100,000 sq ft expansion of the Colburn School in downtown Los Angeles, designed by Frank Gehry. It holds the 1,000-seat Terri and Jerry Kohl Hall, a Dance Center and two gardens.
When does the Colburn Center open?
The Colburn Center opens with a gala concert on 25 September 2027 and a free community celebration on 26 September 2027. Its Dance Center opens in August 2027.
Is the Colburn Center Frank Gehry's last building?
The Colburn Center is Frank Gehry's final building in downtown Los Angeles, Archinect reports. Gehry died in 2025, before it was finished.
Sources
- Colburn Expansion — Press RoomColburn School
- Colburn's Frank Gehry-Designed Expansion to Open in DTLA in 2027MyNewsLA
- Peek inside Frank Gehry's Colburn expansion, under construction in Downtown LAArchinect
- New Gehry concert hall takes shape in downtown Los AngelesLos Angeles Times (via Yahoo)
- Frank Gehry, master architect and LA icon, dies at 96Archinect
- Frank Gehry — 1989 laureateThe Pritzker Architecture Prize
