The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park

This guide to The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park in San Diego opens with a question: how a forty-five-million-dollar concert shell for the San Diego Symphony, after fifteen years of temporary tents on this waterfront, ended up costing far more than planned. It follows the project through a pandemic delay that pushed the opening back more than a year, and the choice the symphony made to keep building rather than simply wait it out. You'll hear where the curved white canopy's design actually comes from, a traveling acoustic shell built in London years earlier. Look up at the membrane skin tuned by hidden microphones and speakers before you find a spot on the lawn.