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"But, the Emperor has no Clothes!" : Frank Gehry

Posted by Bambi B (A) on October 9, 2006 at 06:36:30

In Reply to: I found it a boring, connect the dots experience: a documentarian posted by tinear on October 8, 2006 at 04:49:52:

tinear,

I haven't seen the documentary of Frank Gehry- which may be a satisfying look at him and his work, but having been in four of his buildings, watched his career, heard lectures and met him, I find his work to be rather lifeless and static as well as conceptually being among the thinnest architecture in history.

The forms are fun and at first appear dynamic, but as Gehry purposely is anti-architecture- trying to subvert the rules as often as possible. I find it childish and unrefined- whimsical and merely attention grabbing. The interior spaces are either accidental and a scaleless mess- the result of the collision of the forms seen from the inside- or purposely subverted as shells within shells so that the outside and inside forms are different and the relationships obscured. The deliberate "anti-architecture" of deconstructivism to me is like a person spouting personally contrived jargon to try and obscure a point while sounding a genius. Gehry sets up a game that only he undertands, that only he can play, plays it well, and thereby sets up a signature, distinctive style.

It's art, and many love the forms, but it's like a child's game. If you look at Gehry's sketches for his buildings, he scribbles the outside in elevation- almost like a skyline, and then the forms eventually are collided to conform to that moment's whim. These two minute scribbled sketches are framed and treated as the instant art of a genius- sold in galleries.

In my view, Gehry's work seems like amazingly impulsive and two-dimensional thinking which is then "fleshed out" (by others) and the functional spaces, materials and structure an afterthought.

There are successes like Bilbao (I haven't been there but friends have) where the forms in the setting have a kind of energy, but the interiors are more important than the art and to me are distracting and careless. I've been to the Disney Hall three times and while the forms are interesting, they're not cohesive or memorable, I find the acoustics terrible, the space in the hall is cramped to allow for all the contrived architecture around it, and the inside and outside forms are unrelated. It sits on the street as a deliberate subversion of context and if any argmument was to be made for completely self-indulgent, but thin architecture, there is the poster child. It looks ridiculous as an urban solution and in it's forms suggests Los Angeles is not worth Gehry responding to- the Disney Hall could be plopped down equally anywhere.

Personally, I think Gehry's work will be seen in the future as playful and interesting experimentation with form that happened for a period of transistion when architects didn't know how to move pass Post-Moderism, but conceptually deconstructivism is a one-trick pony and mostly artistic indulgence- an abberation like Gaudi, but with the fun, intensity, and humour sucked out.

Louis Kahn was mentioned in this thread- and there is a study in contrasts. Kahn had deep concepts of hierachical space and structural expression- a conceptual integrity that ties all aspects together in context- and is therefore nearly antithetical to Gehry. The two standing side by side would see Kahn as the calm adult and Gehry as the naughty child with a short attention span.

Architecture can also be art, but I believe when it tries to be purely Art it's only a dodge to larger respsonsibilities of history, humanity, context, and meaningfully articulate space.

I think the Gehry documentary would be interesting to see, but in my view it should be titled "But, the Emperor has no Clothes!".

Cheers,

Bambi B

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