ANTITHESIS:
THE ARCHITECTURE OF FRANK GEHRY
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WHEN EVERYBODY ELSE IS READY FOR THE ENDING, I’M JUST READY TO BEGIN. IT’S BEEN THE STORY OF MY LIFE. Frank Gehry
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The Gehry Residence Santa Monica, California 1975
rank Gehry was born Frank Owen Goldberg on February 28, 1929, in Toronto, Canada. Creative at a young age, Frank got his start building imaginary homes and cities from items found in his grandfather’s hardware store. This interest in unconventional building materials would come to characterize Gehry’s architectural work. Gehry relocated to Los Angeles in 1949, holding a variety of jobs while attending college. Gehry eventually graduated at the top of his class with a Bachelor of Architecture degree from University of Southern California in 1954. It was during this period that the architect changed his Goldberg surname to Gehry, in an effort to preclude anti-Semitism. In 1956, Gehry moved to Massachusetts and enrolled at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Underwhelmed and disheartened, he eventually dropped out of school, returned to California, and made a name for himself with his “Easy Edges” cardboard furniture line, in production from 1969-1973. However, Gehry was still interested in building, remodeling his family home in Santa Monica with the money earned from Easy Edges. The remodel involved surrounding the existing bungalow with corrugated steel and chainlink fence and effectively splitting the house open with an angled skylight. Although many of his neighbors disapproved of the unconventional design, it was this structure that caught the attention of the architectural world, launching his groundbreaking career.
Biography
Model of the Jay Prizker Pavillion, Chicago, Illinois
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The Vitra Design Museum Weil am Rhein, Germany 1989
Deconstructivism and Style
Though the architect himself has never championed the term, much of Gehry’s work falls within the style of Deconstructivism, which is often referred to as post-structuralist in nature for its ability to go beyond current modalities of structural definition. Deconstructivism departs from modernism in its inherent criticism of culturally inherent givens such as societal goals and functional necessity. Because of this, structures of this style are not required to reflect specific social or universal ideas such as speed or universality of form, and they do not reflect a belief that form follows function. Gehry is sometimes associated with what is known as the “Los Angeles School” or the “Santa Monica School” of architecture. This group is unified more by the area itself, which produced a group of the most influential postmodern architects including Gehry, than by a unifying principle or theory. Nevertheless, there was a tendency among the architects against pretension and against the trappings of stereotypically “high” art. Gehry in particular is known for his choice of unusual materials as well as his architectural philosophy. The use of materials such as corrugated metal leads some of his designs toward what seems to be an unfinished, or even crude, style. In fact, he has been called “the apostle of chainlink fencing and corrugated metal siding,” yet his work shows a remarkable sophistication and classical edge. Gehry’s architecture is an antithesis, a mix of light and steel, of whimsy and structure.
Model of the Ray and Maria Stata Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts
An example of the deconstructivist complexity of Gehry’s design is found in the Vitra Design Museum in Weil-am-Rhein, Germany. The structure takes the typical unadorned white cube of modernist art galleries and deconstructs it, using geometries reminiscent of cubism and abstract expressionism. This subverts the functional aspects of modernist simplicity while taking modernism, particularly the international style of which the building’s white stucco skin is reminiscent, as a starting point. This building marks the first appearance of curved forms in Gehry’s work, breaking up his more usual angular shapes. The result is a dynamically powerful interplay of elements which would otherwise seem to be discordant.
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Dancing House Prague, Czech Republic, 1995
The Dancing House
1995
The Dancing House, originally nicknamed “Fred and Ginger” after the legendary dancing duo, was a collaboration between Gehry and Croatian-Czech architect Vlado Milunic. It sits on a vacant riverfront property in Prague, standing out among the surrounding Baroque, Gothic, and Art Nouveau buildings. Its site was the location of a house destroyed by the U.S. bombing of Prague in 1945. The plot and structure lay decrepit until 1960 when the area was cleared. In 1992, Gehry and Milunic began developing Milunic’s original idea of a building consisting of two parts, one static and one dynamic, which were to symbolize the transition of Czechoslovakia from a communist regime to a parliamentary democracy. Construction on the building was completed in 1995. The first of the Dancing House’s central bodies is a tower of glass close to half height and supported by curved pillars. The second runs parallel to the river and is characterized by the moldings that follow a wavy motion distributed through the windows so that they are not aligned. The “dancing” shape of the building is supported by 99 concrete panels, each a different shape and dimension. On top of the building is a large twisted metal structure nicknamed “Medusa.” The top floor of the building is open to the public and houses Celeste Restaurant and Bar, a French restaurant that offers diners panoramic views of Prague. The general shape of the building is now featured on a gold 2,000 Czech koruna coin, completing a series called “Ten Centuries of Architecture.”
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1997
With its architect encouraged to create something daring and innovative, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao has been hailed as a signal moment in the architectural culture. It is most frequently named as one of the most important works completed since 1980 in a survey among architecture experts.
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain 1997
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
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Walt Disney Concert Hall
2003
In 1988, Frank Gehry was selected from among several candidates in a design competition for the Walt Disney Concert Hall to be built in Los Angeles. Though the project was put on hold for a few years during the 1990s, Gehry’s design was eventually realized and revealed to the public in 2003. The interior of the concert hall was designed as a single volume, with orchestra and audience occupying the same space. Seats are located on each side of the stage, providing some audience members with distant views of the performers’ sheet music. The steel roof structure spans the entire space, eliminating the need for interior columns. The organ stans at the front of the hall, a boquet of 6,134 curved pipes extending nearly to the ceiling. It is the unique result of a collaboration between Gehry and Manuel J. Rosales, a Los Angeles-based organ designer. Gehry also worked with Yasuhisa Toyota, an acoustical consultant, to hone the hall’s sound through spatial and material means. The result is a space both visually and acoustically enlightening. The reflective, stainless steel surface engages light as an architectural medium. The facade’s individual panels and curves are articulated in daylight and colored by the lights of the city after dark. Thin metal panels allowed for adventurous curvature, while glass fissures in the facade bring light into the lobby and pre-concert room, reading as a grand entryway through an otherwise opaque building.
Top: Walt Disney Concert Hall Los Angeles, California 2003
Below: Axonometric Plans of the Walt Disney Concert Hall Opposite: Interior
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As Gehry achieved celebrity status, his work took on a grander scale. His high-concept buildings, including the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Dancing House in Prague, and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, have become tourist attractions in their own right. In 2011, Gehry returned to his roots as a residential designer, unveiling his first skyscraper, 8 Spruce Street in New York City, and the Opus Hong Kong tower in China. The 76-story skyscraper at 8 Spruce Street, currently marketed as New York by Gehry, is the 12th tallest residential tower in the world and the second tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere. It contains a public elementary school owned by the Department of Education below 898 residential rental units. Gehry himself calls the building his “love letter to New York City.� It does seem to be lovingly designed, with its endlessly shifting surfaces, an antithetical juxtaposition of form and structure and motion, suggesting the movement of a waterfall or drapery. Gehry replaces the anonymity of the assembly line with an architecture conveying the infinite variety of urban life, as he has throughout his carreer.
Living in a Gehry Building
“LIQUID ARCHITECTURE. IT’S LIKE JAZZ—YOU IMPROVISE, YOU WORK TOGETHER, YOU PLAY OFF EACH OTHER, YOU MAKE SOMETHING, THEY MAKE SOMETHING. AND I THINK IT’S A WAY OF—FOR ME, IT’S A WAY OF TRYING TO UNDERSTAND THE CITY, AND WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN IN THE CITY.” This Page and Opposite: 8 Spruce Street New York City, New York 2011
Front Cover: Interior of the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, Las Vegas, Nevada 2010 Back Cover: 8 Sruce Street, New York City, New York 2011
Booklet by Kelly Cunningham for Antithesis: The Architecture of Frank Gehry