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Lian (Harvard GSD M.Arch.I)

I graduated in 2013, but still blog here once in a while.

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    Frankly Speaking

    By Lian Chikako Chang
    Sep 24, '09 7:43 PM EST

    Hello Archinect!

    A couple of quick notes from the Gehry/Brown conversation in Piper tonight.

    image

    Joe Brown is great, but he is very PC and says the right thing; Gehry is more, well, Frank, so the notes and quotes I jotted down are from him:

    Gehry started by talking about how it's important to "stay parental" as an architect; to find ways to maintain control of a project. He discussed/praised Dessault CATIA (which he used very early on) in this context. Then he observed how students are "all" using Rhino and how the challenge is to "keep the humanity" when trying to negotiate the complex process ("which goes through thousands of people") from your "dream image" to a built project.

    Brown asked Gehry what his most important accomplishment is. Gehry starts by sidestepping the question with humility (whether genuine or feigned, but it seemed honest) and talked about the fact that he still has "a healthy level of insecurity," that he's still "scared and hungry and on the run looking for the next project.” He then adds, "let’s get rid of all the bullshit about starchitects and all that crap," and advises us to not follow fads. He then talks about how he's proud of his work with clients, schedules, budgets, that "most of the projects don't leak," and pronounces that “it comes down to personal relationships, which it always does, in any business… which can be difficult, because people have family problems, psycho problems, drug problems, kids.”

    Thanks for reading. Good night!
    Lian



     
    • 1 Comment

    • rza

      I hope the first year students weren't shocked.

      Sep 26, 09 2:34 am  · 
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About this Blog

This blog was most active from 2009-2013. Writing about my experiences and life at Harvard GSD started out as a way for me to process my experiences as an M.Arch.I student, and evolved into a record of the intellectual and cultural life of the Cambridge architecture (and to a lesser extent, design/technology) community, through live-blogs. These days, I work as a data storyteller (and blogger at Littldata.com) in San Francisco, and still post here once in a while.

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