Excellent, thoughtful posts, jump, thanks for keeping the discussion at a wholistic level to which we should aspire.

correa makes gehry look like a statuary.

I mean, i like a couple of FOG's buildings just as a good lookin "thing", but as an architectural form they seem to be irresponsible towards....well, just about everything.

I started this thread because it was the news i was waiting for, i think we'll see more lawsuits against a couple of starchitects in the near future, due to their absolute ignorance towards social and environmental criteria surrounding their design, i'm not saying i'll enjoy this confrontation, but it is predictable.

Does anyone have any inside information on the lawsuit? The text of the suit is here.

It seems like the real design problems involved snow and ice buildup on the window boxes. On the other hand, inadequate control joints and lack of a drainage mat sound like the contractor's fault. Even if Gehry's CD's were wrong, the specs probably included performance specifications. It also seems like the biggest cost issue was the water management at the brick paving at the outdoor amphitheater. Not really a "starchitect" issue.

Thanks for that link. It looks like that MIT is basically not really putting all of the blame on Gehry, but rather saying that the problems resulted from the combined actions of FOG and the GC... they're not really differentiating, just saying that they have to sort it out between the two of them. The fingerpointing and public accusations alluded to in this thread are apparently the result of the GC pointing fingers at FOG (over the problems with the paperless CDs, warnings, etc etc). It's anyone's guess right now which of them is really at fault and we really don't have information on that accept for the GC's public accusations against FOG. We just have to see how this turns out.

it is no offense to anyone of this thread as i've been posting as well, but at times it does seem completely silly for us to comment on star architects like gehry and correa. love them or not, they are both fantastic at what they do. who really knows what went wrong with the gehry building. we are just speculating, and it could be anything. and i'm sure charles has had a building or two leak in his day. it seems as though whatever any "normal" architect has to say about such above said greatness is completely irrelevant. i remember in the film sketches of gehry an artist was asked what his critique of gehry would be if he were to critique him. his answer was that he wouldn't say anything, good or bad, because it was like "flies on a lion" and it just didn't matter.

Nonsense -- you don't paint a picture of hysteric forms and then call it cutting edge, without what is essensial are the structure not the face of it. If this is the emporors clotches it will show in the structure, if that is just fiddled standard fittings and craftsmans hamonika , then call that cutting edge . Who care if it is all lies and emty tincans with not one single thought about production or raising architecture into a new reality of cheap safe, family houses ---- when things start to leak in these modern computerised times, it is serious, it shuld be serious as now it will eat the money that othervise could be used answering the questions this dead end Tinhats can not answer. Now patching a bad architecture replace investing in an alternative , an alternative that could deliver, what that sort of spatacular architecture can only picture.

"i remember in the film sketches of gehry an artist was asked what his critique of gehry would be if he were to critique him. his answer was that he wouldn't say anything, good or bad, because it was like "flies on a lion" and it just didn't matter."

that's utterly ridiculous. would he say the same about criticizing president bush? "flies on a lion"? i'm with those exposing the emporors clotches.

i've been trying to think of an analogy for this thread. here goes. the gehry and the correa are like two cakes. both are actually pretty good cakes, but the gehry is covered with little icing rosettes and multi-colored sprinkles; the correa has vanilla icing. now some people will like the plain cake, because they just appreciate a well baked cake; others care more about the appearance of the cake, but still want a tasty cake as well.

gehry is a cake decorator as are most of his contemporary starchitects: zaha, libeskind, even rem (at least formally). though they would never admit it, they are a part of a baroque phase of postmodernism; all are decendents of eisenman's sign without a signifier brand of postmodernism (most of these architects were in fact featured in wigley's moma deconstructivism exhibit). correa is basically one of the last of the modernists, an architectural descendent of corbu with the glasses to prove it. modernists are cake bakers.

i'm not exactly sure where i'm going with this, but i think when it comes down to it i appreciate cake bakers more than cake decorators. there's something about architects like correa or arets or cloepfil that provide beautiful solutions rather than just decorating the cake. perhaps if more time and care were spent perfecting the recipe for the cake rather than decorating it, gehry may not be facing a lawsuit, and architecture may not have to answer for such eccentricity.

someone left that cake out in the rain. And it took so long to bake it. I don't think that I can take it.

"eccentricity." Sorry I don't get it ; it's an architect a dinusaur, something soon lost when things start sparkle , still my critic are that it arogant towerds the very structure of it's deformation, architecture is not painting.

Sorry that shuld state ; "it is arogant towerds it's own deformation"

Maybe better ;"it is arogant towerds the core structure, of it's own deformation"

there have been great eccentric geniuses in architecture - boullée, piranesi, gaudí, hejduk, etc., but the architects who have continued a sort of lineage of architectural invention from the greeks to mies were working within a framework of history and precedent. the eccentric geniuses all tended to privilege a unique vision over the mundane aspects of building. not to say that gehry falls completely in line with the aforementioned architects (gehry is in fact a great builder), but as soon as a singualr vision becomes the foundation of practice, you begin to cross over a line towards eccentricity.

@ el jeffe / mdler (from a few pages back)

nearly every single building technology class in the M.Arch program at MIT uses this as some sort of forensic study - it's hilarious. it's a veritable catalogue of bad examples of brick veneer, problematic glass roofs, the messy sprinkler systems needed to protect glass enclosed fire stairs, etc etc...

i think jafidler above provides a good analysis of the situation, although i might quibble just a little about where Rem falls in all of this. His scholarship IMO dabbles in both cake baking and cake decorating and his design work spans the spectrum. I also feel tha the spectrum itself is something of a continuum. Afterall, where would one fit the playful modernists of both the Spanish and Dutch schools (mvrdv, monolab, actar, etc etc)?

As a cake decorator FOG set out to do more than supplement our architectural vocabulary with some newfangled toppings, but rather he sought to make the process by which such toppings might be added to cakes the only process of design (gehry's DP-based PM system and the whole modular/component-based paperless design management methodology and software platform he peddles). Unfortunately for him this is where thr standards of the artist as cogitator customarily has to give way to the achitect as engineer, and the engineer depends on a far more conservative an time-tested set of methods that broaches only gradual, incremental change, to a complex ecosystem-like supply chain of interdependent relationships.

Ideas alone don't build (good) buildings, and i fear that our embrace of the likes of FOG have contributed in some small way to undermining the craft.

Stuff him and exibit him ????

I love the cake analogy, jafidler. (And the perfect song lyric to follow it, bboy!)

I had never seen that amphitheater view before. What a ridiculous-looking building it is. It is definitely through and through "a Gehry".

correa is as much of a decorator as any of the others. he is not a builder in the sense that say prouve was a builder. not even remotely.

he is a modernist for certain, but then again many of the people above explicitly have made it their job to continue the modernist agenda which they feel has been derailed...in particular rem and zaha take this stance (or so it has been argued).

modernism in the hands of meier, correa and similar has become as much a decoration as any type of baroque design you care to mention.

if there is a distinction to be made between architects in modern architecture i would contend that it lays mostly with the approach to program and how a buildig engages with site, and perhaps how both of these issues relate to spatiality. i would say all of the folks mentioned above struggle with these issues and are succesful to varying degrees depending on the project in question. correa is pretty good with site sensitivity in many of his projects and has even done some interesting program-driven plans but in general is quite orthodox when it comes to planning and if not for his nice graphic design skins would not be particularly special. rem on the other hand is special in each of the categories above. he seems to be dogmatic about it really...for better or worse.

gehry has done some very interesting things with context at places like bilbao and at the disney theatre, and spatially does very interesting things that are much more important than the skin that holds/shapes it.

but what really makes me curious is that whenever gehry (or rem for that matter) does something someone doesn't like or where some negative issue is brought to light, the cry is always that it is proof the guy sucks in general. whereas really the only thing it could really prove is that he sucks specifically. it is like a building is viewed as a symptom of some sort of broader disease. i don't get that.

anyway, in our world i think style is useless as an indicator of quality of space, function, or even intent.

Exactly -- style in Disney new concert hall is to discuss the emporirs clotches the panels, without taking one single look to se if it realy is right, that what is underneath -- the structure, is in fact one fiddled mess.
But after the mess are paneled no one can see that --- then do it matter. Do it matter if the structure are an oldfasion fiddeled assembly only possible, becaurse the stel workers has some smart gadgeds so you can build any form even without drawings, from smal pieces and a lattrice system --- that is not innovation or newthinking at all, it's giving the client what he want, a picture of how you would emagine innovation and newthinking to unfold --- but by core nature it is anything else.Please look --- where are the newthinking, the innovation, the reson for the grandious words said when the clotches are fit, when you look under the clotches ,and only see easy craftsman solutions, clumpsy square steel assembly , where are the advanced technikes in this ;



It is build as a strong theater decoration, there are no reson to call that innovative.

It is fighting the heavy steel beams, bending them with brute force into some form , that form , if you know about steel bending, will newer be the projected form, and while the primitive crafts force the resisting steel beams into wierd curves by huge expenses and a great efford --- then to judge the newthinking and innovation, please the ones who know just 3dh know, how easy and without brute force, much more elegant and without bending and fiddeling, a 3dh structure just smooth it's form without anyone need to fight the materials --- this is fighting the materials, not an elegant new way to form frames by cutting them flat , it is a primitive way to buld, when you know other methods.

Gee how I hate when theoretics don't know it is silli to brute a steel beam into a curve, just to have one rib in the framework, compared 3dh it is as primitive as the cavemans stone adge., offcaurse what you praise are the panels covering it, but underneath, the building technike , if standard lattrice systems with a bit fiddeling for those wierd forms , can be called technikes at all, compared what is possible today, without brute force and huge bending and scrap expenses, just with something as simple as 3dh.

jump, you're throwing a bunch of stuff out there, half of which no one including myself in contending. for one, no one is saying, "gehry sucks." i think we all respect gehry's place in architecture (though i will say that his innovations in building have come much more from his development team than they have himself). second, correa and meier are two very different animals. yes, meier is a cake decorator; he uses modernism as a style. correa has contributed more to architecture in his plan for new bombay than gehry ever will in his formalist buildings. that's what i mean by thought in architecture; thought is not simply how you fold a skin.

personally i love rem, and i do believe there is great thought in his body of work. if anyone, he is the great architectural thinker of his generation. at the same time, something gets lost in the translation to building. he can't seem to find the thought in his blue foam. there are exceptions (seattle public library), and then, there's cctv ("big, shiny building with a hole in it" as vado would say). it's not worth turning this into a "i like this guy, you like that guy" conversation. personally i think this discussion has run its course.

jafidler. perhaps i misunderstood posts above, and i agree the horse has been well and thoroughly flogged, poor beasty.

as a final thought, i think a fixation on style makes it hard to talk intelligently about architecture at all.

all architects are stylists at some point, richard, rem, frank and charles (and chris and thomas too)...it is what happens within/beyond style that excites me...on that score i think there is a lot more to frank than folding skins. just not always. maybe that is where the rub is to be found.

somewhere, there is a steel detailer, even with all the computers, in the back of fabrication shop, who is the real FOG, and who makes it happen. Im sure FOG gives sends him a holiday card.

I heard that the bandshell in Chicago was eventually built from measurements with transits, ploting the panel points in space by hand because the cpu model had discrepencies between it and the subframe. Ive also heard this is typ the case and the model is more a means of estimating.

whoa there jafidler. you know i don't believe it's wrong to be critical of famous architects just because they're famous. but i do think it's important every once and a while to take a moment and reflect what we are being critical of. at some point i have to respect how much x, y, or z has accomplished in his career, whether or not i really like his work.

bossman, dude, i'm just stating a fact when i call gehry a cake decorator. in this thread, i haven't written anything that's factually inaccurate and feel like i've given fair criticism of his body of work. i don't know why everyone seems to think i'm out to skewer the guy.

i don't think you are out to skewer the guy. i don't disagree with what you've said. the first remark in question wasn't directed toward you, it was just a reminder that, for example, i can love or hate louis kahn's work, but i'm not louis kahn. but beware, calling gehry a cake decorator is an opinion, not a fact.

i think what you are trying to argue is just the difference between form and content. thus, decoration can be a confusing word to use as decoration can still be meaningful (see above charles correa picture). i think you and i both agree there's nothing wrong with decoration if it's meaningful, no? perhaps the sprinkles can have a taste to them which affects the overall flavor of the cake, such that banana sprinkles on a vanilla cake might brink it closer to the taste of a banana split than just vanilla. but i think you are using the word decoration in place of the word form, as in "form trumps content," which is basically what gehry is doing. even he would agree with that. gehry wants nothing more than to end the need for historical baggage and meaning in his architecture. even if formally it is related to eisenman's work, gehry doesn't care if there's a real relationship to what eisenman was trying to do at all.

a completely separate conversation but i'd say a lot of these "baroque modernists" as you call them are more influenced by tatlin, vesnin, and popova than anything else, of course only for visual reasons rather than political ones.

i would actually go so far as to argue that there's nothing wrong with decoration at all, and that this doesn't make me a post-modernist.

that is a big difference isn't it le bossman.

correa, meier and similar took modernism off from corb. rem, zaha, etc went with the russians. not sure how frank and peter fit into that context. could they have decided to kill semantics without first having the deconstruction and skewering of modernism, or are they somehow still modernist in their soft creamy centers...? based on that video last week i kinda wonder if peter is not a clasicist as much as mises was, at heart...

?

well not all the russians. let's not forget about mosei ginsberg, a corbu guy. an entirely separate discussion to be had on archinect: the difference between the oft-mislabled russian constructivists, and the rationalists, who most people mistake for them.

It is January and it is raining hard in Los Angeles. I thought it would be a good day to go and see the exhibition at the California Aerospace Museum (built by Gehry 1982-84) with my girlfriend.
It was closed due to major leakage. We went to the ScienCenter instead.