Archinect - News

Frank Gehry opens up about the emotional side of his architecture

2015-09-10T15:51:00-04:00

Gehry feels his work is never perfect, never finished. "It can never be perfect," he says. "By definition it can't because we're defective creatures."

As part of an interview about Paul Goldberger's forthcoming biography "Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry," Frank Gehry revealed the emotional underpinnings of his practice, going so far as to turn down work that would unduly hamper his emotional expression. As the interview notes, "[Gehry's] taken hits from other architects and critics over the years who have said that the buildings don't work inside, or that they're too hard to construct — but stubbornly and passionately he has held onto one goal: to create buildings that inspire emotion."

For more recent Gehry news:

• Frank Gehry's renderings for L.A.'s Sunset Strip revealed

• Looking to "Frank Gehry", after Paris but before Los Angeles

• Gehry to prioritize hydrology in LA River revitalization strategy

What Starbucks Gets that Architects Don’t

2013-10-18T15:00:00-04:00

The round tables at Starbucks were the result of asking the question how do we want people to feel before considering what do we want them to do...Form follows feeling.

Christine Outram (currently the Senior Inventionist at Deutsch LA.) penned an essay regarding what architects can learn from Starbucks, when it comes to human centered design. Specifically, in terms of user research, ethnography etc.

eMotion and mapping museum experience

2012-10-31T10:54:00-04:00

eMotion researches the museum-going experience experimentally. At the heart of the project is the investigation of the psychogeographical effect of the museum on the museum visitor.

Over the weekend, Dorothy Spears reported on the work of the German Martin Tröndle, whose research into the experience of the museum-goer, has had some surprising results. Using a combination of GPS tracking and sensors which gathered various physiological reactions, the eMotion project came to the conclusion "How much museum goers know about art makes little difference in how they engage with exhibits". Tröndle also learned that "solitary visitors typically spent more time looking at art and that they experienced more emotions". One wonders how this sort of research, pairing sensory data to spatial layout and other factors, could be applied in architecture/design, in terms of refining/testing or iterating building plans, rooms layout etc...