Nov. 17 (Bloomberg) -- As an architectural icon, the new high school for the arts in downtown Los Angeles has some stiff competition: Jose Rafael Moneo's Catholic cathedral is right across the street, and Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall is just three blocks away.

The school's architect, Wolf D. Prix, believes the seven- building, $234 million Central Los Angeles Area High School No. 9, as it's known until it gets a permanent name, can hold its own against Moneo's geometrically complex cathedral, Gehry's flower- shaped concert hall and Arata Isozaki's Museum of Contemporary Art down the street.

High School No. 9's truncated-cone library building, the tower topping a 957-seat theater and the public entrance on Grand Avenue are all clad in softly reflective stainless steel, echoing the look of Disney Hall. Even the roller coaster of a giant ``9'' that spirals around the tower is clad in perforated steel, though the school isn't intended to resemble Gehry's building.

``What we did actually design is an icon for an art school,'' says Prix, co-founder of Vienna-based architecture firm Coop Himmelb(l)au, during a tour of the school, scheduled for completion this year and opening in September 2009. ``So this is not referring to Frank, or to Isozaki, or to Moneo. It's just to add another icon in this area.''

High School No. 9, which will serve 1,700 students, is one of 132 new schools that the Los Angeles Unified School District plans to build by 2012. The district's $12.6 billion program, intended to relieve overcrowded campuses, is the largest school- construction program ever undertaken in the U.S.

Hollywood's Home

Unlike New York City, whose original Fiorello H. LaGuardia high school for the arts dates back to 1936, Los Angeles has never had such a school even though it's home to the Hollywood film, television and music industries. Students at High School No. 9 will specialize in dance, music, theater or visual arts, with separate buildings for each discipline.

The school's centerpiece is its theater, equipped with a full stage, orchestra pit, backstage and scene-construction area. It's bigger than the 415-seat Herbert Zipper Concert Hall at nearby Colburn School, a college-level music conservatory, or the 739-seat Mark Taper Forum diagonally across the street at the L.A. Music Center.

The theater's dark blue-gray interior walls support hard- plaster acoustical clouds, used to diffuse audience sound, that match the color of the exposed concrete floor. Four more clouds -- curved ones that span the theater's ceiling -- hang from above, over seats covered in bright red fabric.

Sculptural Tower

Outside, the theater is topped with a tower originally intended to house a rentable event space with a view of downtown Los Angeles. While school-district standards ultimately didn't allow for such a use, a version of the tower was maintained for its distinctive look, transformed from functional element into sculpture.

Prix, whose firm also designed a glass-and-steel addition to the Akron Art Museum in Ohio that opened last year and the planned European Central Bank tower in Frankfurt, is philosophical about the change.

``Let's say it's architectural,'' he says of the tower. ``What I like is it has a lot of meaning urban-wise, the gateway. But it's empty, and almost senseless. What else is art than seemingly senseless?''

More functional is the cafeteria, which seats 180 and can be used as a multipurpose room. Two steel-clad, cube-shaped skylights are set at an angle into the cafeteria's roof, creating 9-by-9-foot squares that jut down from the ceiling. A third skylight sits atop an overhang outside the cafeteria, where more students can eat.

Student Security

Sunlight also is drawn into the school's library, a slanted, stainless-steel cone that's truncated by a circular skylight 64 feet above. Inside, rounded walls -- which hold curving, overlapping, translucent fiberglass panels -- allow the librarian to keep an eye on students, says Karolin Schmidbaur, director of Coop Himmelb(l)au's Los Angeles office.

The campus is laid out so that gates and building doors can be unlocked to allow public access to performances or art exhibitions while still keeping classrooms secure.

Circular windows at the visual-arts building look across Grand Avenue to the Hollywood Freeway -- and, conveniently for high-school students, a Burger King. Lockers line only one side of the building's halls, with asymmetrical lighting and a blank opposing wall ideal for the display of art.

There's no guarantee, of course, that art will be confined to its intended place. Prix hopes students will respect the new school, though he also knows that teenagers, particularly those with an artistic bent, may not leave his buildings free of graffiti.

``If they do so, I really don't mind. I wouldn't say that I would propose them to do so, but I wouldn't mind,'' he says. ``We will see, yeah? I hope that the creativity is stronger than the destructive brain in the art student.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Daniel Taub in Los Angeles at dtaub@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 17, 2008 00:01 EST