A great lover of music, Gehry has long worked with acousticians, from Christopher Jaffe, whom he met in the 1960s, to Yasuhisa Toyota, who has worked with him for twenty years. Over the years, he has forged solid friendships with conductors such as Pierre Boulez, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Michael Tilson Thomas and Simon Rattle.
From the Merriweather Post Music Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland, to Concord, California, and the Hollywood Bowl, he has devoted himself to designing musically hospitable, sonically exemplary venues, from the long-delayed Walt Disney Concert Hall to Berlin's Salle Pierre-Boulez.
A similar attitude to questioning current building types can be found in the field of research and teaching, where Gehry has taken the time to rethink the spatial implications of their working and interaction methods, at the cost of careful dialogue with the future users of his buildings. From Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Sydney, he has planted striking buildings on campuses whose design and operation merit analysis.
