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National Journal's Wiliam Powers surveys the architectural reviews of Disney Hall and awards Herbert Muschamp of The New York Times the prize for "baroque exuberance verging into meaninglessness." His excerpt of Muschamp's work:
Imagine a moon apple: a hollow sphere of lunar light. Somebody hands you a knife and says, "Cut!" How many shapes can you make? Peel a ribbon. Carve out squares of curving surfaces, concave and convex. Change the dimensions. Turn some slices inside out. Tweak. Stretch. When you're done, compose the pieces into a flowering cabbage. Then into a cabbage rose. Rearrange. Magnify. Reproduce the contours with large panels of stainless steel etched to a soft matte finish. Jump in and soar.
Powers also reviews L.A. Times coverage.
Second, you've got the classic, century-old saga of Los Angeles trying to find an identity, or at least to make itself a peer of New York. In furtherance of which mission the Times treated the Disney Hall story as the Eighth Wonder, covering it from every minute angle imaginable to the editorial brain, with many, many thousands of words, and headlines that ran the gamut from "Disney Hall Hailed as L.A. Cultural Jewel" on page one to "Poet Wallace Stevens Found 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird'; Now Downtown Residents and Workers Cast Their Gaze on Disney Hall" deep inside the paper.
Link via Romenesko.