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."
— NPR
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
10 Comments
I don't think it's bad to design for emotions, but I think Gehry goes way overboard to the point of masturbation.
what exactly is masturbation and is it a positive or negative thing?
“Don't knock masturbation. It's sex with someone you love.” ~Woody Allen
Fred Herring, what makes it "masturbation"?
I think its overboard to call Gehry an architect. He's a building sculptor. An architect wouldn't have put the insulation on the wrong side of the wall at Stata. I wonder if MIT is emotional about having a world-class architect make a rookie blunder on a world-class campus.
That was a $300m lawsuit, settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.
Amazing that he was actually hired to work after that. I guess it shows that no PR is bad PR, unless it's a picture of you in handcuffs being led off to jail.
AnEngineer,
Its like pointing to broken iPhone screens as proof that iPhones are poorly engineered products. It would be missing the larger achievement and the reasons behind its success.
It's not no PR or bad PR, it's NPR!
Sorry Davvid but I disagree. It is more analogous to an iPhone that is unable to make phone calls upon opening the box when brand new. It looks pretty and it is groundbreaking, but it doesn't fulfill one of its core intended functions.
MIT didn't drop the Stata building on the sidewalk. They paid Gehry $15M for the design of a building which at its core is supposed to be a shelter. The main purpose of a shelter is to keep the outside environment outside, both through structural integrity and a robust envelope. The structural engineering design didn't fail but the architectural design of the envelope was a total failure.
Conversely, Terminal 2E at Charles de Gaulle airport was beautiful and innovative architecturally but the structural design was deficient. Would you argue that by focusing on the death of five people that we'd be missing the larger achievement and the reasons behind the success of the structural engineers?
You're arguing that Gehry-designed buildings do not function as buildings? I don't see how you can argue that while so many Gehry-designed buildings exist around the world and seem to function. It seems like a completely overblown accusation that requires a denial of so much evidence. Gehry continues to building very large and ambitious projects with amazing success under extremely intense scrutiny often for cultural clients who obsess over quality, like Louis Vuitton, Vitra and Guggenheim. If the iPhone only existed as a functionless object, it wouldn't sell. The same goes for Gehry's design services. We can shine spotlights on the Strata building and Apple Maps, but like I said, it misses the larger picture.
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