The simplest buildings can present an architect with difficult design challenges. For instance, how does he or she make an airplane hangar look like anything but a shed enclosing a vast raw space? Or how might the designer relieve the visual boredom of the repetitive bays in a factory building?
An ice hockey rink is one of those simple buildings that isn't easy to make into architecture. Like airplane hangars, they are essentially vast sheds covering raw space, and the players and spectators who use them require little more than a shelter with clear sight lines.
The new 90,000-square foot, $8.5-million Disney Ice Center in Anaheim is a rare case of a hockey rink transformed into attractive architecture.
Designed by Frank Gehry, Disney Ice's profile takes the shape of a double curve enclosing its two rinks, and presents a rolling, sweeping silhouette that mirrors the thrill of skating. The exterior, covered in gleaming, acid-etched, silvery aluminum, resembles a pair of open wings welcoming players and fans. The interior, finished in Douglas fir plywood, is warm and sheltering under the grand sweep of its high, swooping ceiling.
"Too many modern rinks I've seen are aesthetically, as well as physically, cold, and that's unpleasant and unnecessary," Gehry said. "I wanted to recreate the feeling I had when I was a kid in Canada, skating and playing in those old Ontario rinks with wooden walls and roofs that made for a wonderfully cozy atmosphere."
Disney Ice's resemblance to a pair of open wings is deliberate, Gehry explained, because the rink is a training facility for Disney's Anaheim-based National Hockey League team, the Mighty Ducks.
"At one point I actually had a canopy shaped like a duck's bill over the entry, but the client felt it was a touch too fanciful." An internationally acclaimed avant-garde architect, Gehry's major projects in Los Angeles include the Aerospace Museum in Exposition Park and the proposed Disney concert hallon Bunker Hill.
The building includes two rinks. One is standard NHL size, 200 feet long by 85 feet wide. The other is a larger Olympic-size rink 200 feet long by 100 feet wide. The NHL rink has seats for 800 spectators; the Olympic rink has seats for 200. Both will also be open for public skating.
"In the usual single-rink layout, skaters have to wait their turn while hockey games are being played, and that can mean having to skate early in the morning or late at night," said Liam Thornton, development manager for the Disney Development Co. "Our aim is to have one rink available for skaters even while a game is going on in the other."
