If Steven Holl’s translucent 2007 addition to Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art didn’t give him Gehry status among architourists, then his four projects this year certainly will. NYT Travel Summer 2009
IMO, Holl has a much higher status for doing architecture than Gehry does already. Gehry's stuff is so much closer to art (and I think he would agree with that sentiment). Holl is, in my mind, a true architect's architect.
lb: I'm going to have to disagree on this one. The work of Holl, while getting arguably better as he ages, is (after all the theory) as compositionally-driven as Gehry's -- thus not any more "architecture" or less "art" than Gehry.
I think one could argue that Holl's work is totally compositionally driven, while Gehry's isn't!
Holl is working out new ideas constantly; he's testing theories AND construction in every project. Gehry's is spatially interesting but the construction is a non-topic and his approach to materials is static.
Personally, while I think Gehry makes some cool buildings, I just don't see any curiosity in his work.
"construction is a non-topic"?? "approach to materials is static"???
For better or worse, Gehry (and Gehry Technologies) has been at the forefront of the revolution in digitally-driven building production and construction processes (though clearly not in digitally-driven design processes). I'd say then, that the construction is a major topic - perhaps, in that it enables the complex spaces and forms he pursues, the most important topic in his work of the last 15 years or so.
I thought "testing theories AND construction in every project." IS a form of art. Maximum architectural art in fact. Art can be a process too, not only the final result.
Actually, all architecture is art. By semantics, by definition. That includes OMA's diagrams, Holl's watercolors, Zumthor's writings and Gehry's scale models and CATIA screenshots, just exactly like all their completed buildings. Some are more "art" than others, but that's only a hierarchical nuance.
bothands, you are absolutely right that the Gehry Technology and software stuff is majorly construction driven, and I meant to allude to that when I posted last night (tired). Gehry has definitely made leaps in the field in that respect, and his willingness to take on another field's technologies to inform his building is a huge topic for him AND something that has impacted the architecture as a whole.
But it's based in such a personal vision - he's honestly someone who builds what he sees in his head with no concern for its context both physical and within the discipline of architecture. It's entirely personal - and this is why I feel it's so closely aligned with the Ab Ex artists. The use of advanced technologies isn't, in my experience with Gehry projects, revealed in any enriching way in the experience of the space, nor is it changing significantly from project to project.
I totally disagree that architecture is always or almost always art, and think Gehry is one of the few whose work is. Holl's watercolors (and Rem's diagrams, and Zaha's paintings, and Joe Bob Archiect's renderings of a kitchen remodel) are pretty to look at - but they're not art; they have a totally different goal than what an artist sets out to learn/expose by making something. NO architectural model is a sculpture, period, no matter how beautiful they are as objects; art is about itself, a model is not.
Maybe I'm getting a little bogged down here, but I'm going to repeat again the Ed Ruscha quote I've stated often when this kind of topic comes up: Gehry's work is "Wow! Huh?" while Holl's work is "Huh? Wow!". I think the latter is far more valuable, in the long run, to advancing culture.
are Duchamp readymades or Rene Magritte's paintings "Huh? Wow!"s or "Wow! Huh?"s? I think they belong to the first category, like Holl. Are Magritte and Duchamp artists? like Holl?
Picasso's Guernica, first time you see it, is more of a "what the hell is that?" than "ooh, how beautiful, what colors.."
In fact, most modern art is "Huh? Wow!" than anything else. Even 19th ct impressionists.
Even before I entered arch school I knew, and was told -in primary school-, that architecture is an art. One of the main six. Period. That's how society perceives architecture.
Bring in Corbu and Koolhaas, and the social agenda of modern arch if you want. It's still an art. It has plastic qualities, therefore, even in FOA's computer generated forms through data and diagrams, etc, there's a work of composition involved.
Every spatial solution that has been erected into something that you can touch with your hands is a buit form and has to be formalised... by an artist. With a beautiful watercolor or with an abstract idea or with a set of numbers of population fluxes, that doesn't matter at all. Those are the first steps towards a similar result: a real building/park/city/landscape, that has a shape... and it smells. And, apart of being useful and programatically flexible, you want it to be beautiful. Like Holl's works.
8 Comments
Hahahaha "Gehry status"?
IMO, Holl has a much higher status for doing architecture than Gehry does already. Gehry's stuff is so much closer to art (and I think he would agree with that sentiment). Holl is, in my mind, a true architect's architect.
lb: I'm going to have to disagree on this one. The work of Holl, while getting arguably better as he ages, is (after all the theory) as compositionally-driven as Gehry's -- thus not any more "architecture" or less "art" than Gehry.
I think one could argue that Holl's work is totally compositionally driven, while Gehry's isn't!
Holl is working out new ideas constantly; he's testing theories AND construction in every project. Gehry's is spatially interesting but the construction is a non-topic and his approach to materials is static.
Personally, while I think Gehry makes some cool buildings, I just don't see any curiosity in his work.
"construction is a non-topic"?? "approach to materials is static"???
For better or worse, Gehry (and Gehry Technologies) has been at the forefront of the revolution in digitally-driven building production and construction processes (though clearly not in digitally-driven design processes). I'd say then, that the construction is a major topic - perhaps, in that it enables the complex spaces and forms he pursues, the most important topic in his work of the last 15 years or so.
I thought "testing theories AND construction in every project." IS a form of art. Maximum architectural art in fact. Art can be a process too, not only the final result.
Actually, all architecture is art. By semantics, by definition. That includes OMA's diagrams, Holl's watercolors, Zumthor's writings and Gehry's scale models and CATIA screenshots, just exactly like all their completed buildings. Some are more "art" than others, but that's only a hierarchical nuance.
bothands, you are absolutely right that the Gehry Technology and software stuff is majorly construction driven, and I meant to allude to that when I posted last night (tired). Gehry has definitely made leaps in the field in that respect, and his willingness to take on another field's technologies to inform his building is a huge topic for him AND something that has impacted the architecture as a whole.
But it's based in such a personal vision - he's honestly someone who builds what he sees in his head with no concern for its context both physical and within the discipline of architecture. It's entirely personal - and this is why I feel it's so closely aligned with the Ab Ex artists. The use of advanced technologies isn't, in my experience with Gehry projects, revealed in any enriching way in the experience of the space, nor is it changing significantly from project to project.
I totally disagree that architecture is always or almost always art, and think Gehry is one of the few whose work is. Holl's watercolors (and Rem's diagrams, and Zaha's paintings, and Joe Bob Archiect's renderings of a kitchen remodel) are pretty to look at - but they're not art; they have a totally different goal than what an artist sets out to learn/expose by making something. NO architectural model is a sculpture, period, no matter how beautiful they are as objects; art is about itself, a model is not.
Maybe I'm getting a little bogged down here, but I'm going to repeat again the Ed Ruscha quote I've stated often when this kind of topic comes up: Gehry's work is "Wow! Huh?" while Holl's work is "Huh? Wow!". I think the latter is far more valuable, in the long run, to advancing culture.
are Duchamp readymades or Rene Magritte's paintings "Huh? Wow!"s or "Wow! Huh?"s? I think they belong to the first category, like Holl. Are Magritte and Duchamp artists? like Holl?
Picasso's Guernica, first time you see it, is more of a "what the hell is that?" than "ooh, how beautiful, what colors.."
In fact, most modern art is "Huh? Wow!" than anything else. Even 19th ct impressionists.
Even before I entered arch school I knew, and was told -in primary school-, that architecture is an art. One of the main six. Period. That's how society perceives architecture.
Bring in Corbu and Koolhaas, and the social agenda of modern arch if you want. It's still an art. It has plastic qualities, therefore, even in FOA's computer generated forms through data and diagrams, etc, there's a work of composition involved.
Every spatial solution that has been erected into something that you can touch with your hands is a buit form and has to be formalised... by an artist. With a beautiful watercolor or with an abstract idea or with a set of numbers of population fluxes, that doesn't matter at all. Those are the first steps towards a similar result: a real building/park/city/landscape, that has a shape... and it smells. And, apart of being useful and programatically flexible, you want it to be beautiful. Like Holl's works.
Like Holl's works. Like Gehry's works.
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