Mortality and other somber doses of reality fill a rather dark and sobering gabfest with Frank Gehry. Grab the tissue: you're about to laugh and cry, but I promise you'll leave the theater with a smile.| Wall St. Journal
Thanks Marlin, that was a pleasant read. I recently watched Sydney Pollack's documentary, Sketches of Frank Gehry. It left me feeling good about what Gehry does, and how he does it. I've never been particularly fond of his sort of architecture, but after a view into the artist's personality and process, I can appreciate it for what it is...you know, look at it within its' own terms.
"you know, i find solace, like a lot of people do, in bach and beethoven. i go backwards, and just the things i rail against in architecture people doing, i do in music or literature."
Steve, when i came across that quote, it didn't make sense. Color me a student for the day and explain it to me....something about the grammer keeps tripping me up (the journalist points out that the comment was unsolicited, so my guess is the quote is a direct transcription and needs some emotion in order for it to make sense, to me, at least.)
my take on it: he promotes modern in architecture and 'rail[s] against' those who would look to the old, yet he himself goes back to the classics when reading or listening to music.
my commentary (unsolicited):
this is something with which i struggle and i wish that he had examined it further. it should be part of a larger discussion of what we do instead of something we resent so much that we sheepishly try to ignore it.
sure, a lot of the general public are buying beethoven and colonial homes over steve reich and steven holl. but the distinction he doesn't make is that no one is asking steve reich to recreate beethoven.
gehry sounds very convincing saying that people should leave architecture to the architects, but is so far out of the general practice of architecture that he fails to acknowledge the reality. architects must either attempt to give their red-brick traditional clients a version of what they think they're asking for - even if brilliantly transformed into a building suited for the 21st century - or said client says 'phooey, architect' and goes to a designer/developer/builder.
music and literature have a much larger consumer group from which to pull their potential audience. steve reich doesn't have to wait for commissions, doesn't have to meet anyone's particular taste, and has a worldwide audience waiting to see what he does next.
architects are faced with either 'selling' their way of doing things in a local environment with a limited pool of clients, becoming developers themselves, or getting work published and visible to a larger audience - whether through participating in academia or getting a few lucky early projects that get them known.
the fact that buildings aren't portable is part of their magic but also part of the challenge of becoming an architect known beyond your city. gehry's career is unique and admirable, a fact that he acknowledged in pollack's movie. his comments here that architects should be the authority of good design is something that smacks of his living in rarefied air these days.
i wonder if he's ever talked to steve reich or phillip glass or other composers of his generation about tradition, modernism, and public's taste? that would be an interesting conversation.
the fact that buildings aren't portable is part of their magic but also part of the challenge of becoming an architect known beyond your city.
but buildings' images (and concepts behind them) are exportable as any record or book or film can be.. I bet there are as many Steve Reich's fans around the globe waiting for his last work as mayors waiting to talk to mr. Gehry to get his own Guggy... music is for the masses but architecture is still for the elites, isn't it?
i'm reading something about the CIAMs of the 1930s and wondering what would have happened if those architects (from Corbu to Sert) would have appeared in a more calmed society instead of the turbulent Europe of the 1920s and 1930s, because there was a time that the masses (at least down here in the iberian peninsula), and not only the political and economic elites, shifted their taste and embraced the "modern" with a certain enthusiasm (though probably more for what rationalist architecture and urbanism cared about than how did it look like)
I've just read "The Architecture of Happiness" by Allain de Botton (a recent you-know-what gift), and it talks amongst other things about the importance of values that architecture communicates. It makes me wonder if much of the discussion of historical styles versus modernism really misses the point; I wonder if "the people" often look at what a building conveys, while architects are taught to think of the zeitgeist, to represent the unmediated now. So much of the time, we give them cool abstraction (or whatever it is we think makes us "relevant") which might sometimes be suitable, but other times clients might want something warmer (or whatever), but are generally left to return to older styles to find that which the zeitgeist has supposedly abandoned.
There's really nothing wrong with modern architects listening to Beethoven in my opinion, not because of its age or style, but because it still has meaning for us now. It still touches us, which is why this art is immortal. The same for architecture. Is it possible that if the conversation were to move substantially away from styles and more towards the values of the building and how they are conveyed, that eventually agonising over academic stylistic arguments (and architects' own egoes) would fade away, as would historicist pastiche?
I'm not thinking of what Post Modernism tried by the way, since I think that movement was still obsessed with style and zeitgeist thinking.
Well, it's just a thought...
nineteenth century warehouses and monticello move/touch me, but i don't want to see new ones just like them. what do they convey about our lives, lives which are otherwise populated with ipods, crossfires, laptops, flat screen tvs and cellphones? i'm not being at all academic about this. i'm wondering why it is that the design of most of our everyday objects has one attitude and our architecture has another.
marlin may be right that architecture is and has always been for the wealthy. but there was a time when the less wealthy were also optimistic enough to want a 'modern' architecture - not modern in style, but modern in attitude. monticello borrowed from history as a modern way to convey forward-thinking ideas. balloon frame housing was a completely modern and american idea. nineteenth century warehouses with cast iron facades were modern solutions, as were the bowstring barrel-roofed work buildings of l.a. in the early part of the 20thc.
de botton suggests that our architecture can be/should be aspirational. so when did we become so conservative and not-optimistic that we started to believe that to be modern was no longer appropriate and that associations with colonial williamsburg were a better expressions of our lives and our dreams?
i know that this is a tired and very basic conversation. it's something we, as architects, can't answer very easily because we have very specific biases. i'm interested in the seeing some type of social history that might help explain the shift in values that made 'modern life' scarier than the life of 'traditional values' (which often scare me terribly).
Steve, i think you menat to attribute the "architecture is for the wealthy" assertion to Medit, not moi.
I don't really think architecture is a class issue, but someone's gotta foot the bill to get it built. And, like Gehry says, we've done a piss porr job of educating the public about our relevance. So if we are marginalized due to our apparent irrelevance, only the rich can splurge on our services. That's our fault and no one else's.
I don't want to see nineteenth-century buildings recreated either.
As for why people like past styles, I think that's rather complex and very interesting, but do we need to solve it entirely before we can move on?
Nevertheless, I would suggest that changes tend to occur so frequently in the modern age that many people don't feel comfortable embracing it all, and try to surround themselves with images of stability wherever they can, especially in their homes. It's actually a natural human desire, I think, to balance the possibilities of frequent change on one hand with a sense of permanence elsewhere. Historicism is not a new phenomenon, after all: Augustus couched his transformations to Roman politics in ancient Greek architecture and outward reverence for Republican traditions, and you have to admit, it worked. But I'm sure there's still more to this issue.
And I know it isn't rational. People wear the latest Nike sneakers but live in mock-colonial saltboxes. Most of us have out inconsistencies; it's also natural. Perhaps feeling that they're being told they're "wrong" is one reason people who lean to traditional styles are turned off from modernism. After all, wallpaper* magazine didn't become popular telling people that modernism is rationally "right", they just made the case that it was "good" and fashionable. I'm not saying that we should be as cynical or vanity-baiting as wallpaper*, mind you, but it does point out the power of our less rational sides. We shouldn't deny that side, either.
I haven't read all the comments because Mad TV is on across the room and I'm having a hard time concentrating. Interesting discussion, though.
But I did read the article - Frank does sound quite engaging in it. I'm a total softie for the notion that he is mostly proud of running a good business - making a good place for people to work.
And that quote you posted, Steven, is exactly the one that caught my eye. Also, I haven't seen Sketches of Gehry yet, but the DVD is on the shelf. The article makes me want to see it soon.
13 Comments
Thanks Marlin, that was a pleasant read. I recently watched Sydney Pollack's documentary, Sketches of Frank Gehry. It left me feeling good about what Gehry does, and how he does it. I've never been particularly fond of his sort of architecture, but after a view into the artist's personality and process, I can appreciate it for what it is...you know, look at it within its' own terms.
yep.
Steve, when i came across that quote, it didn't make sense. Color me a student for the day and explain it to me....something about the grammer keeps tripping me up (the journalist points out that the comment was unsolicited, so my guess is the quote is a direct transcription and needs some emotion in order for it to make sense, to me, at least.)
AP: yep. I was surprised by the amount of emotion and sincerity that came across in this article: it's good stuff. Likeable guy, Mr. Gehry seems.
yeah, his word order is screwy. needs an editor.
my take on it: he promotes modern in architecture and 'rail[s] against' those who would look to the old, yet he himself goes back to the classics when reading or listening to music.
my commentary (unsolicited):
this is something with which i struggle and i wish that he had examined it further. it should be part of a larger discussion of what we do instead of something we resent so much that we sheepishly try to ignore it.
sure, a lot of the general public are buying beethoven and colonial homes over steve reich and steven holl. but the distinction he doesn't make is that no one is asking steve reich to recreate beethoven.
gehry sounds very convincing saying that people should leave architecture to the architects, but is so far out of the general practice of architecture that he fails to acknowledge the reality. architects must either attempt to give their red-brick traditional clients a version of what they think they're asking for - even if brilliantly transformed into a building suited for the 21st century - or said client says 'phooey, architect' and goes to a designer/developer/builder.
music and literature have a much larger consumer group from which to pull their potential audience. steve reich doesn't have to wait for commissions, doesn't have to meet anyone's particular taste, and has a worldwide audience waiting to see what he does next.
architects are faced with either 'selling' their way of doing things in a local environment with a limited pool of clients, becoming developers themselves, or getting work published and visible to a larger audience - whether through participating in academia or getting a few lucky early projects that get them known.
the fact that buildings aren't portable is part of their magic but also part of the challenge of becoming an architect known beyond your city. gehry's career is unique and admirable, a fact that he acknowledged in pollack's movie. his comments here that architects should be the authority of good design is something that smacks of his living in rarefied air these days.
i wonder if he's ever talked to steve reich or phillip glass or other composers of his generation about tradition, modernism, and public's taste? that would be an interesting conversation.
but buildings' images (and concepts behind them) are exportable as any record or book or film can be.. I bet there are as many Steve Reich's fans around the globe waiting for his last work as mayors waiting to talk to mr. Gehry to get his own Guggy... music is for the masses but architecture is still for the elites, isn't it?
i'm reading something about the CIAMs of the 1930s and wondering what would have happened if those architects (from Corbu to Sert) would have appeared in a more calmed society instead of the turbulent Europe of the 1920s and 1930s, because there was a time that the masses (at least down here in the iberian peninsula), and not only the political and economic elites, shifted their taste and embraced the "modern" with a certain enthusiasm (though probably more for what rationalist architecture and urbanism cared about than how did it look like)
I've just read "The Architecture of Happiness" by Allain de Botton (a recent you-know-what gift), and it talks amongst other things about the importance of values that architecture communicates. It makes me wonder if much of the discussion of historical styles versus modernism really misses the point; I wonder if "the people" often look at what a building conveys, while architects are taught to think of the zeitgeist, to represent the unmediated now. So much of the time, we give them cool abstraction (or whatever it is we think makes us "relevant") which might sometimes be suitable, but other times clients might want something warmer (or whatever), but are generally left to return to older styles to find that which the zeitgeist has supposedly abandoned.
There's really nothing wrong with modern architects listening to Beethoven in my opinion, not because of its age or style, but because it still has meaning for us now. It still touches us, which is why this art is immortal. The same for architecture. Is it possible that if the conversation were to move substantially away from styles and more towards the values of the building and how they are conveyed, that eventually agonising over academic stylistic arguments (and architects' own egoes) would fade away, as would historicist pastiche?
I'm not thinking of what Post Modernism tried by the way, since I think that movement was still obsessed with style and zeitgeist thinking.
Well, it's just a thought...
nineteenth century warehouses and monticello move/touch me, but i don't want to see new ones just like them. what do they convey about our lives, lives which are otherwise populated with ipods, crossfires, laptops, flat screen tvs and cellphones? i'm not being at all academic about this. i'm wondering why it is that the design of most of our everyday objects has one attitude and our architecture has another.
marlin may be right that architecture is and has always been for the wealthy. but there was a time when the less wealthy were also optimistic enough to want a 'modern' architecture - not modern in style, but modern in attitude. monticello borrowed from history as a modern way to convey forward-thinking ideas. balloon frame housing was a completely modern and american idea. nineteenth century warehouses with cast iron facades were modern solutions, as were the bowstring barrel-roofed work buildings of l.a. in the early part of the 20thc.
de botton suggests that our architecture can be/should be aspirational. so when did we become so conservative and not-optimistic that we started to believe that to be modern was no longer appropriate and that associations with colonial williamsburg were a better expressions of our lives and our dreams?
i know that this is a tired and very basic conversation. it's something we, as architects, can't answer very easily because we have very specific biases. i'm interested in the seeing some type of social history that might help explain the shift in values that made 'modern life' scarier than the life of 'traditional values' (which often scare me terribly).
Steve, i think you menat to attribute the "architecture is for the wealthy" assertion to Medit, not moi.
I don't really think architecture is a class issue, but someone's gotta foot the bill to get it built. And, like Gehry says, we've done a piss porr job of educating the public about our relevance. So if we are marginalized due to our apparent irrelevance, only the rich can splurge on our services. That's our fault and no one else's.
I don't want to see nineteenth-century buildings recreated either.
As for why people like past styles, I think that's rather complex and very interesting, but do we need to solve it entirely before we can move on?
Nevertheless, I would suggest that changes tend to occur so frequently in the modern age that many people don't feel comfortable embracing it all, and try to surround themselves with images of stability wherever they can, especially in their homes. It's actually a natural human desire, I think, to balance the possibilities of frequent change on one hand with a sense of permanence elsewhere. Historicism is not a new phenomenon, after all: Augustus couched his transformations to Roman politics in ancient Greek architecture and outward reverence for Republican traditions, and you have to admit, it worked. But I'm sure there's still more to this issue.
And I know it isn't rational. People wear the latest Nike sneakers but live in mock-colonial saltboxes. Most of us have out inconsistencies; it's also natural. Perhaps feeling that they're being told they're "wrong" is one reason people who lean to traditional styles are turned off from modernism. After all, wallpaper* magazine didn't become popular telling people that modernism is rationally "right", they just made the case that it was "good" and fashionable. I'm not saying that we should be as cynical or vanity-baiting as wallpaper*, mind you, but it does point out the power of our less rational sides. We shouldn't deny that side, either.
I haven't read all the comments because Mad TV is on across the room and I'm having a hard time concentrating. Interesting discussion, though.
But I did read the article - Frank does sound quite engaging in it. I'm a total softie for the notion that he is mostly proud of running a good business - making a good place for people to work.
And that quote you posted, Steven, is exactly the one that caught my eye. Also, I haven't seen Sketches of Gehry yet, but the DVD is on the shelf. The article makes me want to see it soon.
- that is the least of what a starchitect should be doing!
well, there were those stories about FOA some time ago...
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