Frank Gehry's closing line on an interview By Ellis Woodman for Building Design.
Gehry's endgame

The 75-year-old talks to Ellis Woodman about George Bush, building bandstands and beating Bill Gates

By Ellis Woodman

So I�ve just arrived in Chicago, haven�t slept for 21 hours and am running late for an audience with the world�s most famous architect. I�m also spectacularly wet, having run the three blocks from the subway to Millennium Park through a downpour of biblical proportions.

Making my apologies to Frank Gehry, I�m sorely tempted to hand over the tape recorder and ask him to do the interview without me. Mr Gehry, however, has something he wants to get off his chest: �You�re a Brit? You guys like Bush, don�t you? I don�t: I hate him. I�ve never been this scared in all my life. I�m coveting my Canadian citizenship.�

Mindful that an informed dialogue on the parlous state of global politics is somewhat beyond me, I steer the conversation towards safer waters: namely the 15m stainless-steel tsunami breaking over our heads.

Gehry�s Jay Pritzker Pavilion is the centrepiece of Millennium Park � a new 10ha public space occupying a site on Chicago�s downtown lakefront which previously served as a car park. The development � which also includes contributions from landscape architect Kathryn Gustafson and artists Jaume Plensa and Anish Kapoor � is the initiative of Chicago�s bullish mayor, Richard M Daley. Civic improvement has been a cornerstone of Daley�s 15-year tenure � an enthusiasm he inherited from his father, Richard J Daley, who was himself mayor for 21 years.

Gehry is a fan: �He�s a control freak like I am, but I loved that he was so involved. And at a time like this in America, when there�s so much polarisation and drawing lines in the sand, it�s wonderful to have a mayor of a city like this stand up and act in an optimistic way, building bridges and creating a place for people.�

Gehry�s building is an auditorium, designed to accommodate the free outdoor concerts that the Grant Park Orchestra & Chorus has been staging in Chicago for the past 70 summers. The project�s principal technical innovation is its steel trellis which arches over the audience and supports a network of speakers. Everyone therefore enjoys optimum sound without views of the stage being disrupted by posts �the usual method of supporting a distributed sound system.

The other key decision was to greatly expand the scale of the proscenium so that it registers visually for every member of the potentially 11,000-strong crowd. This pleated stainless-steel �headdress� also serves as an acoustic screen and as a means of concealing the lighting rig. But its principal role is sculptural �indeed the whole building had to be classified as a sculpture in order to circumvent restrictions on the height of park buildings.

In its relationship to the nearby skyscrapers, the pavilion strikes a similar note to Gehry�s Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles � both buildings establish a middle territory erupting between a horizontal ground condition and a vertical skyline. At Chicago, the relationship to the ground has been further enforced through the introduction of a snaking pedestrian bridge connecting Millennium Park to Grant Park on the other side of North Columbus Drive.

Given the levels of invention that past projects have demonstrated, the new building doesn�t seem to break much new ground. However, it�s a significant project for Gehry in that it represents a further step towards acceptance in the US after a long period during which his most substantial works were realised in Europe.

He identifies the completion of the Bilbao Guggenheim as the most significant factor behind this change of climate.

�The reason the Disney Hall got built was because Bilbao happened. The rap on the original 1989-90 design for Disney Hall was that it couldn�t get built. But when they saw Bilbao people began to say: �I guess this guy knows how to build�.�

Charles Jencks, client for the Dundee Maggie�s Centre, likens Gehry�s career trajectory to that of Louis Kahn, who also found fame late in his career.

�It�s true that good architects, like good wine, mature late,� Jencks says.

�I think Frank has reached the point of enjoying his elder statesman fame. But he has an office of 150 and he has to keep getting the big commissions. He is very aware of the grim reaper, and he�s constantly asking if he�s repeating himself. He has terrible anxieties about the pressure to produce another Bilbao.�

Sitting in Chicago, a city that boasts so many of the great works of American architecture, I ask Gehry to what extent he sees himself as belonging to an American tradition. He is noticeably resistant to the suggestion, perhaps understandably given that he didn�t come to the US until he was 17 and that so much of his work has been realised beyond American shores.

Jencks isn�t surprised: �I�d have to compare him to Bruce Goff. He�s an American authentic, a lone wolf. Remember, he was friends with all the artists in LA, and one part of him still sees himself as an outsider to the American architectural scene.�

I ask about the progress of Gehry�s sideline project, Gehry Technologies, established to market the CATIA software that has been so fundamental to his recent formal experimentation. In the past, he has joked that the success of the enterprise could make him �the Bill Gates of architecture�.

Today, he�s somewhat more sanguine. �It will be a miracle if that makes any money,� he says.

�The thing I like about the software is you�re in control of more information than ever. It gives you a parental role in the project which architects don�t usually have. Over time, that might be interesting to other architects.�

And how does he see the technology developing? �I think it�s going to be a paperless process, like the aircraft industry. We�re working on that right now. I think, eventually, it should be possible to cut five or six months out of a building process � a lot of it in the approval process because it would all be online. I envision people in the field with laptop-type things so they don�t have to carry around a big roll of

drawings. All of the parts will be pre-cut, without paper, directly from the program. If there are mistakes, they will be fewer but bigger.�

He still has unsatisfied ambitions and is particularly delighted that his practice has recently won its first planning commission, for the expansion of Harvard. However, he is clearly aware that his time is finite: �I don�t know, I should probably quit. I�m 75. I�m trying to let the younger guys in the office go forward.�

So can Gehry see a scenario where the practice would keep going without his involvement? �Well they want to, so I�m happy to let them. I don�t know if it can work, but they are building up a constituency of people that they are working with.�

As we wrap up, he asks what I�ve got planned during my stay in Chicago. I mention that I�m hoping to head out to Mies�s Farnsworth House. He laughs.

�I wouldn�t be able to live in the Farnsworth House. It�s great, but I think minimalism in architecture implies that you have a lot of servants to clean up for you. If you drop your clothes on the floor, they immediately disappear. I couldn�t live that way. For one thing, I couldn�t afford to.�

Even after the short time that I have spent in his company, I have a sense that this is a characteristic comment. For all Gehry�s wild formal invention, his work is shot through with a deep concern for architecture�s social implications.

As he enters the last phase of an extraordinary career, one suspects that his anti-establishment streak will be increasingly tested by his new-found public acceptance. Jencks sees his friend�s relationship to celebrity as deeply ambiguous. �There�s part of him which hates to be put on a pedestal, and part of him which craves it,� he says.

To date, Gehry�s US commissions have been funded by private benefactors � in the case of the Chicago project by Jay Pritzker�s widow, Cindy. However, surely it can�t be long before he is awarded a state-funded commission?

�Well, I haven�t yet seen the architecture that this regime has built,� he says, �but unfortunately, I�ve been told that President Bush likes my work.�