Gabion: Gehry, Moneo and Meier in Los Angeles, not forgetting Welton Becket. Where has L.A. got to with its non-movie culture? 1/5

I felt like a character in an H.M. Bateman cartoon: "The Man Who Suggested That Frank Gehry's Disney Hall in Los Angeles Was Maybe Not So Great After All". The hysterical boosterism that surrounded the opening of Gehry's long-awaited concert hall last week was almost terrifying in its intensity. In L.A. itself, it hit a frenzied peak. Gehry could do no wrong. He could walk on water. It was the finest building in the world, possibly the universe. Critics queued up to heap hyperbolic praise on it. Newspapers ran special editions on it. Ahem - excuse me?

Maybe I've just seen too many Gehry buildings now. The first one I ever visited was in 1989, outside Basel in southern Germany, just when Frank was getting into his late-life stride. Disney Hall is the third new one this year alone. I expected full-on Gehry-esque spectacle all right, but found that LA, his home city and the mothership of all things filmically spectacular, had somehow stifled it. When I caught my first glimpse of Walt Disney Hall - so named because it is part-funded by Walt's widow Lillian - my heart did not leap. When I got closer, it still refused to budge. When I entered the foyer, it did not start to go bippidy-bop. When I made it into the auditorium, the beats per minute appeared to remain normal. I did not experience that longed-for Bilbao moment.