Located in Jacobs Park on San Diego Bay, The Rady Shell is an outdoor concert hall designed to accommodate the San Diego Symphony, a Californian orchestra founded in 1910.

The structure reinterprets the design originally created by Soundforms – a team that includes London-based partners Flanagan Lawrence, Expedition and ES Global – for the 2012 London Olympics. Now extended in collaboration with Tucker Sadler Architects and proposed as a permanent facility, the architecture aims to be a cultural and attractive hub for the city of San Diego. 

The orchestra space resembles a large shell, an organically shaped pod accompanied by backstage areas, three professional kitchens, underground restrooms, a sloped seating area for 10,000 people and a park open to the public. The hall achieves high standards of acoustic quality, comparable to those of indoor concert halls, thanks to the use of systems and panels developed specifically for the space.