FRANK GEHRY BUILDING ART
By Susan Stanberg, David Sokol Chloe Hodge & Raul Barreneche
Above | Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Jean Nouvel, workshop in Düsseldorf, Germany 1997 Left | Frank Gehry , 2013
26 | FRANK GEHRY
Frank Gehry has been called the most important architect of our age,
Gehry's audacious, glowing buildings capture movement, energy and
and it’s hard to disagree. His creations, such as the Guggenheim
light. He's taken hits from other architects and critics over the years
Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los
who have said that the buildings don't work inside, or that they're too
Angeles, created a new architectural language. With sculptural swoops
hard to construct — but stubbornly and passionately he has held onto
and sweeps and unusual materials, Gehry has changed the course of
one goal: to create buildings that inspire emotion. “If you look at a
architecture. He has spent his career happily playing the role of
great work of art in bronze from 600 B.C. and it makes you cry, some
scrappy outsider, and even if it’s all happening against his wishes, the
artist way back when was able to transmit emotion through time and
Canadian-born Gehry is now unquestionably the world’s most famous
space over years to today," Gehry says, and he believes architecture
and respected architect.
can do that, too. DWELL | 27
28 | FRANK GEHRY
29
BREAKING THE MODERNIST MOLD
I'm only an architect, no matter what anybody says, a humble architect. -Frank Gehry
Over the years many adjectives
His early projects were fairly
have been used to describe Frank
typical of the times and followed
Gehry's creations; things like
the modernist style; stressing
edgy, forward-looking, astonish-
clean, geometric lines, with no
ing, and weird. Anything but
clutter
ordinary, Gehry challenged the
Simplicity was key; functionality
mainstream in the 1970s and
was the focus.
and
no
decoration.
1980s when he used everyday materials such as cardboard to
Frank the artist, however, was
make furniture, and chain-link
itching to experiment. He was
fencing to construct buildings.
very much caught up in the West
Collectors sought his whimsical
Coast art movement and count-
lamps
and chairs, and Gehry-
ed many emerging artists as his
designed office buildings and
friends, including Ed Moses and
homes were scattered in cities all
Billy Al Bengston. By the mid-
over the world, but the maverick
1960s, Gehry started to, as
arch- itect did not achieve real
Richard Lacayo of Time put it,
fame until the late 1990s.
"insinuate odd bits of business into his designs."
The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, unveiled by Gehry
Gehry began using materials
in 1997, made him a celebrity at
such as unpainted plywood,
the age of sixty-eight. Since then,
rough concrete, and corrugated
countless urban commissions
metal, all of which are usually
have come Gehry's way, and he is
hidden after a house is properly
considered to be one of the most
finished. As Gehry told Lacayo, “I
important & innovative architects
was trying to humaize stuff.”
of the 21st century.
Right |Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Bilbao, Spain, 1997 Previous Page | Gehry Residence, Santa Monica, California, 1978 Next Page | Maggie’s Ninewells Hospital, Dundee, Scotland, 2003
30 | FRANK GEHRY
DWELL | 31
32
DWELL | 33
FRANK THE ARTIST Art and beauty were in Gehry's DNA from the beginning. As a little boy he watched live carp swimming in his grandmother's bathtub on their way to becoming gefilte fish. He loved the shapes and movements they made. Later, fish became a motif in the buildings he designed. After he moved to Los Angeles at 18, his closest friends were artists, not architects. "Their commitment to ordinary materials, to fresh ways to solve problems, making beauty out of the ordinary, affected him very, very profoundly," says biographer Paul Goldberger.
Left | Dr Chau Chak Wing Building, U of Technology Sydney, Australia, 2014
Take chain link fencing- the basic barrier at construction sites and tennis courts. Gehry used it early on, in houses and commercial projects, and was ridiculed for it. "I found the material that everybody hated," he says. It was a material "that was used ubiquitously by all cultures throughout the world, and that disconnection between those two ideas interested me, so I started looking at how I could make chain link — because I hate it, too why not try to make it beautiful?�
Left & Above | Serpentine Gallery Pavillion London, England, 2008
34 | FRANK GEHRY
DWELL | 35
The architect’s structures are intended to be experiential spaces, targeted towards providing a mass audience with an entirely enveloping experience. Gehry explains this directly during
his
interview
with
Sydney Pollack for Sketches of Frank Gehry, questioning, “How do you make architecture human?” “How do you find a second wind after industrial collapse?”
These
questions
surrounding a broader urban vision have run through and set the course of Frank Gehry’s work over several decades.
Right | Der Neuer Zollhof Düsseldorf, Germany, 1999 Left | Maggie’s Ninewells Hospital Dundee, Scotland, 2003
It's not new that architecture can profoundly affect a place, sometimes transform it. Architecture and any art can transform a person, even save someone.
HUMBLED BY FAME
GEHRY’S ARCHITECURAL LANGUAGE
Frank Gehry has been engulfed Over the years, Gehry's materials got more sophisticated. The Louis
by world-wide fame and admira-
and wood. Before that, he made a sensuous Disney Concert Hall out of
Frank was trying to conceive in his head shapes and forms and curves that were not particularly realizable by engineers
supple stainless steel, and glowing silver titanium swirls in the curves of
-Paul Goldberger
Gehry’s inability to take unmiti-
Vuitton Foundation in Paris is constructed with billowing, soaring glass
the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.
tion. Goldberger publishes a revealing quote that shows gated joy at his accomplishment.
His aesthetic has remained almost entirely unchanged in the subse-
He says, "I wish I could live in the
"I was trying to express emotion," he explains. "The curves were from the
quent 20 years, and to a remarkable extent, Gehry seems to have found
place people are making for me.
fish were a sense of movement with inert materials, which the Greeks
a language of his own, which he can finally and fully articulate. Gehry’s
I want to be popular, but I don't
did, the Indian cultures did it. We are living in a culture where movement
architecture springs from the high traditions of the 20th century, yet he
trust it."
is pervasive. Everything is moving, so we hook on to that and use it as
has recast the elite impersonality of modernism into a joyous and
part of our language, our architectural language, there's some
accessible expressionism.
resonance for it.”
Gehry feels his work is never perfect, never finished. He states,
He is the defining architect of the software age, yet he deeply mistrusts
“It can never be perfect. By de-
Movement, emotion, unusual materials, going against current thinking.
the cold touch of computer design. However, software from the
finition, it can’t because we are
These lifelong Gehry themes got transformed when digital technology
aerospace industry let Gehry move his dreams into realities, and is now
defective creatures.”
came along. Goldberger says the digital age let Gehry catch up with his
the defining architect of the software age. Gehry and his staff could
artist friends, through architecture. Like no other living architect, Frank
engineer what sometimes started as squiggles on paper and convert
Gehry embodies the idea of the contemporary masterpiece.
them into structures that would stand up. They made thrilling buildings unlike any that had ever been seen before.
36 | FRANK GEHRY
Left | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Bilbao, Spain 1997 Next Page | Walt Disney Concert Hall Los Angeles, California, 2003
DWELL | 37