Issue Five

Perhaps Gehry is not yet a household name, but Frank Owen Gehry is the pop icon of architecture in this infant 21st century. He was propelled into the culture at large by his hugely successful Guggenheim Museum, built in 1997, in Bilbao, Spain–the building with the voluptuously curved forms and a seemingly liquid skin of titanium foil.

If architecture is “frozen music,” Gehry’s architecture looks partially defrosted. Wildly provocative, delightful and controversial, Gehry’s projects beg certain questions: Who is this guy? What’s this architecture all about? How does he do it? And where can I get some of that titanium?

The evolution of Frank Gehry’s architectural style came through a variety of commercial and residential commissions in the 1960s. These works, while not particularly notable as a collection, afforded the young Gehry the opportunity to ply his trade. Stylistically, they run the gamut between tired modernism and California regionalism, with hints of the found object/ready-made aesthetic. What seem to be his first steps to architectural bad-boy status are evident in his “Easy Edges” cardboard furniture designs, and concurrent project of a studio/house for artist friend Ron Davis.
In the late 70s, Gehry began using his own house in Santa Monica as a laboratory to experiment with ideas.

“My house was a turning point,” Gehry explained to Peter Arnell. “...I felt I could use the project for R. & D. (research and development).”

Gehry established a tension between views into and outside of the house (an old two-story pink bungalow) by wrapping a new corrugated metal wall around the it, assembling other inexpensive materials, such as asphalt, plywood and chain-link, and laying bare some existing wood lathe and studs–making a conscious reconsideration of all of the interactions of material and space between the old and the new. His moves were clearly influenced by a Dadaist sensibility, and by the processes of sculpture; cutting, shaping, assembling, etc. From here, Gehry was able to apply his ideas to larger commissions such as the Loyola Law School, and the California Aerospace Museum in the mid 1980s.

Gehry has also taken other forays into product design. His fish and snake lamps of the early 80s were done as a promotion for the use of new plastic laminates. Parts of Gehry’s buildings began to resemble other foreign objects too. With friend and collaborator, artist Claes Oldenberg, Gehry incorporated a giant pair of binoculars as the central focus of the Chiat-Day Building in 1991 in Venice, California.

It’s possible to recognize multiple impulses at work in Gehry’s architecture. Classifying it is another matter. He is lumped with Post Modernists, and Deconstructivists, but Gehry has carved out a unique place for himself in the history of 20th and 21st century architecture.

Gehry’s buildings exhibit an unbridled joy that anyone who has squeezed damp sand in their fists can comprehend. His is a very personal language. His buildings are quite unbelievable in their eccentricity. They represent a collage of ideas and abstractions, while at the same time they are extraordinary technical accomplishments. His firm pushes computer applications in design and construction to the limit, elaborating his sculptural intent through computer imagery and numerical digital control modeling.

These computer applications also extend to the fabrication of building elements–a visionary integration of design and construction. A case in point is the “Experience Music Project” (EMP), completed in 2000 in Seattle for his client, software giant Paul Allen, EMP is named after Jimmy Hendrix’s Experience. The setting is the futuristic campus of Seattle Center, home of the 1962 World’s Fair. The site, literally in the shadow of the Space Needle, is connected to downtown by a monorail, also built for the Fair. As in Bilbao, Gehry co-opts the urban infrastructure into his design, opening a space between “blobs” for the monorail to pass.

The conventional language of architectural production does not apply to the EMP. Metaphors abound; it is quite impossible to discuss (let alone build) his buildings without coining names for the unique morphology. The forms roughly correspond to the exhibit spaces within, although there are few absolutes in this regard. There are numerous references to the guitar sprinkled about (a neck profile window, broken strings laced across the roof, and a suggestion of a smashed Fender Stratocaster). Between the sporadic Seattle Center campus and the acoustic alchemy of the interactive exhibits, there floats an elaborate envelope of steel, concrete, glass, and various shimmering metal surfaces.

The EMP structure consists of a curved steel framework–a step beyond the stick construction of Bilbao. EMP’s logic is based on that of a ship hull, rather than the sophisticated trusses employed in the Guggenheim. The enclosure picks up here by infilling the framework with steel and concrete. This is covered with a waterproof membrane that allows a secondary support system to penetrate through to hold the luminescent shingles of the outer skin. The shingles–approximately 21,000 different ones–are divided into over 3,000 prefabricated panels. They are made of either brightly painted red and blue aluminum or specially treated stainless steel (including a Purple Haze, naturally.). Some of the steel is colored by bathing it in electrically charged acid. The process leaves a chromium oxide film that dramatically responds to variations in lighting and the color of surrounding surfaces. The effect is magic!

The real conjuring at EMP occurred in the process used for its design and construction. The design was of a particular spatial condition, shaped by a trial and error process of physical modeling. This iterative process led to a “final” form that was digitized into a 3-D computer model. Gehry used a software system borrowed from the aerospace industry, called CATIA (Computer Aided Three-Dimensional Interactive Application). It became a virtual building–an electronic environment. The computer model was shared  by all of the designers, engineers, fabricators, and constructors who joined to make the building. In this digital space, the project was further tweaked and probed and analyzed throughout the final design and construction phases. In fact, without this shared electronic environment, the building could not have been built. It became a demonstration of how buildings might be constructed in the future.

We have certainly not seen the last of Frank O. Gehry & Associates. There are projects under construction, such as the Peter B. Lewis Campus of Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management in Cleveland, and the long awaited Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. And there are many proposals, including the expansive (and controversial) Guggenheim Museum in New York City. He is also being considered for the addition to the Art Gallery of Ontario. Whatever else Gehry’s work is, it is a breath of fresh air compared to the monotony of functionalist modernism, and the Disney quality of New (sic) Urbanism. After all, it is to Architecture what Jimi Hendrix’s Star Spangled Banner was to 1969 nationalism–a swift kick in the ass.

He may be coming to your town next, if you can afford him. But as fashion goes, brace yourself for the proliferation of weak knock-offs. Imagine if “swoopy” buildings become the norm. Or, what if Gehry were to mix a little Zen in his diet. What would the capomaestro come up with then? What about that titanium, anyway?

Kevin V. Connors is a Buffalo native. He is an award-winning designer and has 24 years of professional experience in architecture and engineering. He has been the Principal of Kevin Connors & Associates, an architecture/engineering/planning firm since 1998. He currently teaches part-time in the School of Architecture and Planning at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Kevin lives and works in Amherst, New York.

Alex Szabo is a native of New York City and is a retired professor of social work from Pacific Lutheran University. In the early 90s, while teaching at Southern Illinois University, he received a photography grant from the Illinois Humanities Council for his essay entitled Southern Illinois: Communities of Difference Between the Rivers. A professional photojournalist for the past 4 decades, Alex’s work has been published in both national and international magazines. Alex currently lives in Seattle, Washington.