On Sunday, April 3rd, the new Virginia Center for Architecture opens to the public with a Gehry exhibition. Frank will speak on his philosophies at a forum on the 16th of April. Read more in the Richmond Times, (w/ slideshow of Virginia Center for Arch).
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Building understanding
Gehry talks about his work and his design philosophies
BY CLARKE BUSTARD
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Sunday, April 3, 2005

Frank Gehry practices what he calls "humanistic" architecture. He designs buildings not merely to function but to "engage people. I'm consciously trying to make spaces people like to be in."

Gehry, whose Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles is the subject of the inaugural exhibit at the Virginia Center for Architecture, will speak on his work and his ideas about urban planning at the Richmond Forum on April 16.

Born in Canada, based for most of his career in Los Angeles, Gehry is most widely known for two buildings built in the past decade: Disney Hall and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

His work "dances on the line separating architecture and art," wrote Paul Goldberger, The New York Times' architecture critic.

The 75-year-old architect believes his best designs use the "inert materials" of construction -- steel, glass, masonry -- to create "a sense of movement."

"We live in a society with movement all around us -- cars, planes, boats," Gehry said last week. "So I've always been interested in making buildings that reflect or complement that movement. I've used the expression of movement [to replace] decoration in the 19th-century sense, to humanize a building so it's not just a cold box."

His use of curved shapes and a "deconstructionist" approach that breaks a big structure into smaller pieces represent an alternative to "the box" -- the minimalist style that prevailed in architecture in the 1960s and'70s, Gehry said by phone from his office in Los Angeles.

"Minimalism was replaced by postmodernism, which was lovable but phony, but also opened the door to more options, more possibilities for expression. Architecture now is in that more expressive stage. There's some push to reinvent minimalism, but I don't think the style still has the strength it had when it was introduced."

The typical modern urban setting, dominated by boxes with a garnish of postmodern decoration, "isn't very exciting, and people realize how mundane most of it is," Gehry said. He senses a hunger for "a building that fits in with its community but is also its own strong self."

The challenge for today's architect is "to build very strong architecture that is on the scale of its surroundings and is humanistically oriented -- inviting to the people who use it," he said.

"There aren't many chances to conform to the 'look' of a neighborhood. Cape Cod has a look, but you can't define the look of most downtowns."

Disney Hall, completed in 2003 at a cost of $274 million, is a steel-sheathed assembly of curved shapes that occupies a city block in downtown Los Angeles. It stands next to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, a structure built in the'60s minimalist style of Lincoln Center in New York.

"The people who built Chandler are still around and still love it," Gehry said, "so we didn't want to do anything to denigrate it.

"Chandler is one big form, so for Disney Hall we decided on a structure in smaller pieces, giving it a different scale and body language, allowing Chandler to remain an iconic presence on its hill."

On another side of Disney Hall is a garden that separates the venue from apartment buildings. A new office building that will be another neighbor "probably will be a simple box, relating to the hall in a neutral way," Gehry said. Disney's front eventually will face a pedestrian way with shops and restaurants.


"The real look of the area will not take shape for another five, six, 10 years," the architect said, "and for much of the look and nature of the surroundings, we're going to have to trust the marketplace. That's as it should be -- in a democracy you don't want any one designer or interest exercising too much control."

Although Gehry has the reputation of being an architectural visionary, a maverick matured into a creator of iconic structures, he still enjoys the give-and-take of working with clients and living within a budget.

"If you had an unlimited budget, what would you do -- and would it be any better? I've never had an unlimited budget, so I don't know the answer. But I've seen work done on unlimited budgets, and it doesn't look any better."