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In Reply to: "But, the Emperor has no Clothes!" : Frank Gehry posted by Bambi B on October 9, 2006 at 06:36:30:

Its funny, you and I have almost exactly the same view of Gehry.
What do you think of stuff like the binoiculars?
I think it defines him as more of a sculptor... a stylist prhaps and certainly a conceptualist. I found it odd that the Disney Concert Hall was so praised by musicians... But I do have to say that the Ice rink does look good to me even if I have no idea how it functions.
Is Gehry just another manifestation of the cult(ure) of celebrity? The Paris Hilton of architecture?
In the film he comments that during the 80s (his comment although it could only be very early 80s at most), post-modernists decided to re-work Grek temples (ok I will accept that as a shorthand description) whereas he thought that if you went back through history looking for inspiration you could/should go back through evolution and that was how he came up with the various "fish"-things.
Sounds to me like he has never really gone beyond post-modernism.
Now with a successful practice and pesumably lafgre(ish) staff payroll its possibly too late to turn the juggarnaut.
Whatever happened to Michael Graves?
What would a Frank Gehry Alessi coffee set loot like? Crumpled plastic cups cast in silver?
Oh, I hope he didn't do one of that series...

Follow Ups:

Unfortunately Gehry is all icing and no cake - Bambi B 15:40:17 10/09/06 (1)
dave c,
Yes, I'd classify Gehry as a sculptor who makes buildings. Unfortunately, architecture is so rigourous, in my view it's indecisive and iimpulsive thereby resulting in neither great sculpture nor great architecture. He is certianly a "name brand" and a celebrity among architects, and certainly light years more useful and creative than tv fluff like Paris Hilton.
As for comments on Post moderism, Gehry had to show disdain for cohesive architectural concepts, and especially history- to be able to justify his floppy, impulsive style. There's been this strange insistence that post-moderism is dead and his work is the next thing- nbut to me it's a revolution of fashionability and is so personally arcane it will not survive him. His justifications for the fish shapes are meaningless- they're merely anti-architectural and distinctive to his design.
Cheers,
Bambi B
- Icing the body electric - dave c 16:31:37 10/09/06 (0)
  Yes we seems fairly in accord over Gehry.
  Of course you always have to admire someone who has carved a career... but...
  I just read your posts here and it suddenly came to me that Gehry reminded me of those SITE people... Wines? The guy with the beard? I met them in London and was talking to them about the BEST stores they did to which their reply was basically that no one really cared what they did beyond its publicity value because the things were pulled down and rebuilt every 18 months.
  Can I assume you are or at least were an architect?
  As a small scale developer, I come at the whole thing from a sometimes diametrically opposed direction, but as a designer I do like to have some input into the buildings, although knowing how impossible it is to do good work with someone staring over your shoulder, I try to at least initially limit this to handing over a pile of maybe 50 photographs of elements I think might be relevent and leaving the architect to use them in the way of Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies cards... when you encounter a dilemna, select a card and follow its instructions as a way of manouvering round the problem.

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