Frank Gehry's Winton Guest House was recently announced to be up for auction on May 19 in Chicago. Designed for Mike and Penny Winton during the '80s in Lake Minnetonka, MN, the Guest House helped propel Gehry into international stardom in the '90s. Currently, the University of St. Thomas owns the $4.5 million home, which was repurposed as part of the Daniel C. Gainey Conference Center in Owatonna, MN a few years ago. Ever since St. Thomas sold the Gainey last year, the Guest House is once again up for grabs and must -- also once again -- start relocation this June to meet its August 2016 deadline.
The Winton Guest House revives the question of what cultural value that the house -- and others vernacular structures like it -- possess. As this comment discussion shows, the topic is a subjective one with no clean-cut answer.
Some may agree that the Guest House's value lies in its history, like an art object that can be studied or referred to for inspiration. According to the University of St. Thomas, the house symbolizes a key structure in Gehry's career that expresses "his understanding of architecture as both art and function and his approach to designing a domestic structure", which led to later projects like the Weisman Art Museum, Disney Concert Hall, and the Guggenheim Bilbao. At the same time, others see the Guest House as a hyped-up Gehry-brand commodity that no longer has a functional purpose, other than being displayed as spectacle. In that sense, should a structure be preserved only because an influential architect designed it? How much influence should Gehry's name have in the Winton Guest House's value?
You can listen to more discussion about the Winton Guest House in this recent episode of the Archinect Sessions podcast.
Until the auction comes around in May, what do you think should happen to the Winton Guest House?
37 Comments
This topic has been exhausted already.... it's just art now and because of its size is likely to have many more owners and moved many times in the future.... it's a Warhol now, better put wheels on it.
Selling it presumes that there is a buyer. The size of that presumption will soon be evident.
As a precursor to larger Gehry works, of course eit should be preserved. Though it's funny that it's a guest house.... Not the real one. Perhaps that is telling... Gehry as cool to look at across the yard, as an art gallery but not where you'd want to live yourself.
Which brings up an interesting point. If good art is defined as something you would want in your house, is good architecture defined as a building you would like to live or work in? And doesn't that require actually doing that, at least to some extent, in order to understand if it's good or not?
Thus we return to art vs. architecture ... and Brian McCutcheon's quote about art and function.
it sounds like good architecture is defined by who attaches their name to it?
It would be a lovely studio in which to work. Of course I, and many who would agree with me, probably can't afford it.
Maybe it's art (rather than architecture) not because it's not good functional space, but because it's too expensive?
If cost is the determinant of art, this must be a masterpiece.
Nice, Miles. That's a masterpiece indeed!
It's not art. Architecture is never art. But as I said in the other discussion about this, there is a special context for detached guest houses commissioned by wealthy people. I have little doubt the people who commissioned this work considered it a part of their "collection". It's in a fuzzy place, categorically.
Steven, you said here on Archinect many years ago, and I remember because it is so true, that when a building is loved enough it will change function because people want to preserve the object - they just like it! I like the idea of this structure becoming another use. The idea of a yoga studio is intriguing because yoga studios typically seek to create a very calm environment and this is emphatically not calm! "Xtreme Yoga", perhaps.
"High end" consumers are supremely conscious of brands as assurance of quality (status). Thus architects seek to distinguish themselves from each other for the purpose of creating a recognizable brand. This is not art, it's commerce posing as art.
"This is not art, it's commerce posing as art."
Commerce can't be art?? Since when?
Architecture is never art?
Commerce can't be art?
If your definition of art is being really good at something, a janitor can be an artist.
Architecture is never art?
Art vs Architecture
From before your time :)
I wasn't trying to raise the "art v architecture" debate. I was highlighting "commerce v art".
I read "This is not art, it's commerce posing as art." which sounds to me like you're suggesting that "real" art is somehow separate from commerce.
I don't think that is true.
Miles, read most of that (back & forth), guess I'm going with Brian McCutcheon's definition "art is ideas"...architecture is 100% ideas.... biggest mistake most schools made in the last 50 years is pulling their architecture schools out of their fine arts buildings, many of the best ones didn't... obviously a popular opinion that art & architecture are separate things but is a mistake..... well executed architecture "is frozen music" and music is art.
Whatever you think about art vs function, it definitely sets a precedent for the Gehry kind of cultural type. Much like the gothic style is the Catholic Church, Gehry means the type of cultured art museum for a new secular liberal educated wealthy class. Perhaps the problem is that this type is very limited--It's nice for what it is, easily captures attention, the problem is when this type is the only focus of media/academia. Gehry always gets comments though, and is beautiful for what it is, but the goal of the future will be in making other types more interesting and worth of discussion.
Carerra, everything is an idea at some point. Trying to imagine frozen music, which seems to me to be an absurd metaphor. Is that one note droning on endlessly, or perhaps silence?
McCutcheon's quote was about function. For me, the most succinct quote from the art vs architecture thread is
Architecture is craft, not art. That does not mean it cannot be done artfully, but it still isn't art. When architecture is pushed to become art, it becomes sculpture, not architecture.
When my father focused on sculptural forms the buildings became pretty much unlivable. Sweeping dramatic roofs made great magazine photos but shitty living environments. In his very best buildings form was related to the site without sacrificing function.
Miles, agree to disagree, when one starts believing that architecture isn’t art they transfer architecture to a wall section. While only about 15% of our fees are spent on the art I see the preponderance in your observation, but that 15% is 100% art, even in its simplest form.
What I got out of reading on this was Gehry's allusion/homage to the 20thC Italian artist Morandi. Morandi was known for his arrangements of bottles and other objects. The art patron Max Palevsky collected Morandi, and Los Angles architect Coy Howard knew his work well. Morandi's artwork is behind a lot of architectural arrangments and his work should be studied or at least looked at by architecture students. Seriously. Does anyone on Archinect even know of his work?
I also think it would make a nice studio space. At least for me evocative and sublime.
Maybe if more architects took an interest in Art History and contemporary art, we'd see more architects discussing aesthetics in precise terms that actually pinpoint some of the issues and phenomena that artists are engaging directly. The aesthetic of most buildings is almost an accidental result of a some combination of conventional building systems.
Davvid I agree. The best advise I heard on this was from Coy Howard, architect and SCI-Arc professor at SCI-Arc. " Don't copy other architects, draw from art."
I read alot. And study. Older books on aesthetics, circa 18- 19C. Nuanced and practical. Also Rhetoric which I apply to visual forms. The stuff is fascinting.
Maybe if more architects took an interest in Art History and contemporary art, we'd see more architects discussing aesthetics in precise terms that actually pinpoint some of the issues and phenomena that artists are engaging directly.
I don't agree with Quondam much, but in this case
your art is likely my urinal
Eric, I had forgotten the Morandi bottle connection. I do fear that contemporary architecture schools are not teaching much in the way of art history.
How exactly is this building a "ready made"?
If you only compare the floor plans.
I do not see it either from the information given. To me, Gehrys' is a studied work of vertical volumes.
Frank is into art. He likes art, hangs with artists, stole (borrowed) designs from artists, collects art. I never heard him talk about architecture, except Schindler, whom he admired. And Soviet constructivist architecture, when he designed an exhibit for LACMA. He approaches architecture intuitively, like artists he admires. And when he started his practice he was right in the middle of the Venice art community, and at the time his friends and aesthic peers were artists. Like I said earlier, the better architects 'draw from art'
If architecture isn’t art, why would one study art in school?
Quondam, let's see some pictures of the Cooper & Pratt house.
I am not saying that I don't like Kahn's design or that it isn't studied, but that the intimate scale and the angled central volume make Gehry's composition an order of magnitude greater in terms of spatial perception.
Well then Quondam, let's see that pretty decent redesign.
Please do not do that. You turned a great piece of Architecture by the great Louis Kahn into a hack work by Philip Johnson.
anything can be art. Art is nothing more than the communication of emotions or ideas in a concentrated form through some medium.
Kahn >>>>>> Gehry and Venturi
Hey! Come on! I've got a "decent" sized yard!
When you say 'decent,' do you mean big enough for a bonfire?
Swear to god, if you get this thing in your back yard, with the intent to burn it, I will find a way to make it there and I will bring beer.
Offer only applies to Ken.
I've got a big dog, and he's going to need a place to sleep soon.
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