Frank Gehry spent decades reshaping the cultural geography of Bunker Hill — Walt Disney Concert Hall alone transformed Grand Avenue into a pilgrimage site. That Conrad Los Angeles marks his first foray into hotel design feels less like a departure than a completion of that project, his 28-story glass tower at 100 South Grand Avenue now anchoring The Grand LA mixed-use development directly across from the concert hall he spent years fighting to realize. The curtain-wall facade, with its precisely inset square panels stepping up the tower's midsection, carries the disciplined geometry of civic architecture rather than the titanium exuberance Gehry is famous for — a deliberate restraint that lets Tara Bernerd & Partners do the expressive work inside. And expressive it is, though never undisciplined. Bernerd drew on West Coast Modernism as her organizing sensibility, which shows in the warm oak paneling that lines the suites, the layered wood-slat headboards, and the travertine surfaces that recur throughout. The bar area is the room that earns its ambition — laminated wood pendant lights overhead, rattan-curved barstools at the counter, and the sculptural mass of Disney Concert Hall visible through the double-height glazing like a permanent installation. Outdoors, the rooftop terrace spreads across more than 16,000 square feet, its pergola of heavy Douglas fir beams and hand-knotted rope chairs giving the space the atmosphere of a California garden rather than a hotel amenity deck. The 305 rooms complete a picture of downtown Los Angeles finally comfortable with its own architectural confidence.

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