what do i know, but i think the developer used frank gehry's name and design to get the ball rolling on a difficult project, but had no real intention of keeping him around. good pr, so to speak. Ourossoff's anger is pretty fair, I think.

you mean over-designed structures and wasted space isnt the 'in' thing anymore

you would think that if they paid gehry "10's of millions of dollars" they would at least keep his design

how ridiculous, not that I'm a Gehry fan in particular, but if you ask for a "Gehry" don't complain down the road when his reputation gave you tons of free press etcetera and building permits that he's too expensive. For the kind of buildings he designs he's for sure one of the cheapest, since he developed the technology and so on and knows the limitations/possibilities (especially since most of his buildings follow the same system/logic)

Wk, he did the maggies center in UK for low cost. i think actually he did it for free. and it is a very nice building to boot.

but just in general, why should any architect be required to design something cheap? dude who hired him was playing games or else realised his yield no longer worked. maybe even both. there was no way it was ever in the calculation that gehry's building would be cheap. ousoroff makes a very good point that something possibly great became crap. but hey at least it's cheap! ;-)

Nope, don't think he'll ever go for affordable things!

Whaddya got in mind for him WK?

jump, I am not asking him to design something cheap. I'm just saying, can he design something affordable. You know, with a budget. The way that 95% of us have to operate on normal days.

I can't blame the developer. Even if he did pay Gehry for all of his designs, he's still going to save a hell of a lot of money by not using them.

My thought is, just because we CAN design something with a ridiculous budget, doesn't mean we should. We act like it's our god-given right to design something crazy and go over budget. I disagree with that.


PS. I do remember his Maggie's Center design. And yes, he did donate the design but how much did it cost to build in comparison to the other ones....I wonder...

In California, where I am, I've found that everything but stucco ends up "costing too much" on at least half of my projects.

What I mean by that is that at some point on every project (usually right after the pricing comes in) the contractor or client suggests scrapping careful detailing in favor of the cheapest products available. The client agrees most of the time, when they see the cost savings.

My point is that when you have bargain-basement materials like stucco out there, and a bargain-basement mentality, you get bargain-basement buildings. Architecture is killed in favor of cheapness.

I'm not arguing for expensive, useless buildings. Only for quality and care in the selection of materials and details.

Frankly, WK, I'm not convinced we can assume that the designs *weren't* built to a specific budget. They've been working together on this project for years, after all. You don't get that far without talking budget, getting preliminary thumbnail pricing, etc.

I have worked on a design for a space that went entirely according to client's stated budget, and the thumbnail pricing came in right on target. Shortly thereafter the project was canned, and the client stated in PR releases that it was due to the "overly expensive design". The real reason was that the client changed management and direction of the company, almost overnight, including firing long-time people that had been with company since beginning. Privately we were kept informed of all this -- "change of direction, new CEO" etc -- but to the outside world, the reason is "architect designed something that cost too much." Pretty shitty.

So, don't believe everything a client says, is all.

I agree with mantaray and jump - it's always a bit of a red herring if a developer says "the design was too expensive" - it's usually code for their relationship soured, and/or the client wanted more than their budget allowed and refused to budge on their requirements.

but - I don't recall seeing anything in the article that gehry's "designs cost too much." if the developer needed to change their budget, then I'd imagine gehry would have been more than accommodating. my guess is they simply got sick of working with each other.

the hell with clients! let's all go into paper architecture, that will show them.

I believe in Value Engineering......other wise what can I get for
CHEAP!~

I would be hesitant to fault FOG on this too.. He has a proven track record for coming in within budget and did some amazing early work with little budget (Danziger, Davis, Spiller, Loyola, etc..).

If he is hired to design some extravagent spectacle then that is what he obligated to do. It is a service-based industry after all...

I don't have enough time to read through this all... I will. I would just like to address to randomize...

If I was an employed government planner, it would take me a lot more than Gehry's fame to push through a building permit. In fact, I would never personally approve a building permit for a building designed by Gehry.

Not because of aesthetics but because his buildings are crap.

h&r you must have made a quality planner. so what, you've been unemployed for 2 years now? I can't imagine why.

With that attitude you could get yourself a rockin' job at the Chicago DOB.

I think Gehry could do an affordable building - he has the technology to make it so. I also know that many time private developers are equally responsible for increasing the budgets on his projects, and infact Gehry does have a reputation of designing on budget....construction is a different animal

I'm not trying to make Gehry into the bad guy, or saying that the developer is a saint. However, I think that history tells us that even Gehry designs that are designed to a particular budget aren't likely to stay within it. If you disagree with me, maybe we should consult MIT about the Stata Center, which cost nearly 3x as much as originally planned. Let's also ask them how that building is working out for them....oh, and about the lawsuit, too.

Basically what I'm saying is, if I'm a developer and I've got creditors refusing to lend in an already depressed economy, I can read the writing on the wall....and whereas I once may have been willing to take a chance on cost overruns to get myself a Gehry building, I can't afford to now. So can't Gehry adjust?

h&r you must have made a quality planner. so what, you've been unemployed for 2 years now? I can't imagine why.

I'm not employed as a planner for just that reason.

Most areas that can afford progressive planning offices are incredibly wealthy suburbs who want just that... more incredibly wealthy suburbia. I refuse to participate in that kind of planning on the grounds that I don't believe in nor will profess CPTED (Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design). There's lots of other ideological things I don't agree with even 20 or 30%.

I'm with WonderK... design is design but design in terms of function and cost is a whole 'nother monster.

I will also point out that the reason I wouldn't grant a permit on a Gehry building on celebrity status alone. Just from a simple impact study or feasibility study, his buildings often don't contribute much past any other design and often fall short in terms of maximizing profitability over per square foot. His complex structures often leave voids of completely unusable space and the curviture in his more reasonable projects lend them to having quite a lot of square foot per unit but not much of usable square footage in terms of orthogonal square footage.

Not to mention his celebrity buildings might encourage architectural tourism but how much of that toruism really has very much impact if you take in the costs of sustaining that kind of 15-minute tourism over the regular day-to-day run of business.

I have no problem with Gehry's aesthetics (well, I do but that's not the discussion here) or his notions of grandeur. And last but not least, Gehry is the tip of the iceburg on this issue. He is simply just the easiest to attack.




Moreover, I have no idea how the master planning of such a small piece of real estate could cost so much... "tens of millions of dollars." I mean New York's Department of City Planning has mixed reviews of its usefulness. But I'd imagine the DCP could have done this master plan in a fraction of the cost. I'd imagine a lot more firms could have done this relatively cheap.

Casting aside ULURP and some of the issues, nothing here says "30 million dollars" to do a handful of studies and draw some lines on a map. To me, it says the developer was asking for too much data to sell a project that any government planner would know it would fail. Anchoring anything on a stadium in a master plan is extremely hit or miss-- considering secular drift and standard American culture has been moving away from traditional sporting events.

Ad hominem attacks are one thing but getting a planning job anywhere takes time. The business of planning is often administratively slower that the documentation that GIS allows us to study cities. Part of the problem we're in is the inability of anyone in the trifecta of real estate to give or take harsh criticism.

Plus, I don't have a ivy league PHD in planning to work for some environmental justice NGO.