Interpreting Frank Gehry
The Canadian-born American award-winning architect, or generally termed starchitect Frank Gehry was exposed to a creative environment all through his childhood. His grandmother introduced him to the world of architecture as he made imaginative buildings and towns using wood scraps when he was younger. He later enrolled in an architecture school, and his initial works followed the theory of modernism. However, it was not until 1978, when he was designing his own house in Santa Monica, he experimented on material and chose a radical path towards designing. The choice to go for unusual materials rose from his curiosity and budget constraint. Gehry was fascinated by the denial of people to use industrial materials for residential designs. This drove him to opt for chain links, fences and corrugated metals in his own house. His project got a bundle of critical responses and stood out in his neighbourhood and the city of Santa Monica.
In his movie ‘Sketches of Frank Gehry’ by Sydney Pollack, Gehry described a part of the house where the moonlight, when it hits the roo,f, creates an illusion due to the multiple reflections confuses the user. Gehry’s buildings were ephemeral. The changing volumes in spaces and the varying intensity of life created a fascinating movement, yet it was chaotic and lacked a sense of place and direction.
Gehry’s approach to design was radical; his buildings were a combination of art and architecture, resulting in sculptural pieces. He was inspired by artists and related to them throughout his career. He admired the freedom one possesses while making art; he wanted to experience the same with his architecture. He approaches each building as a sculptural object and each creation of architecture as a painting. While attending the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gehry had become infatuated with Le Corbusier’s paintings. Gehry was impressed with how he developed his language, and his shapes were in his paintings and his buildings; he was painting his ideas.
He was inspired by this different language and was not afraid to incorporate such inspiration into his work. Associates of his firm often say they are looking up a painting he has referred to in design discussions. When the Los Angeles County Museum of Art director would hear complaints that Gehry had taken an idea from them, “I would smile and say that is part of his genius. He has the incredible ability to absorb all kinds of ideas.”
Gehry’s style changed over time after he designed his own house in Santa Monica. He believed that the white boxes of modernism were beautiful yet unfriendly; he wanted to practice humanist architecture that would evoke a feeling in people and inspire them, extracting an emotional response that is not necessarily comforting but enlightening. According to Gehry, the mission of an architect is clear: “To design something that one would want to be a part of, something one would want to visit and enjoy in an attempt to improve one’s quality of life.”
Gehry loves to sketch, and his design process begins with a loose idea about the series of spaces, the profile of the building and maybe the material. He describes them as scribbles, which means nothing to others except him. His design process is layered and involves juggling back and forth between plans, models and sections. The exciting part of his process is the transition from his intuitional sketch to the final design of the building. On comparing, the finished product looks uncannily like his initial idea. His curves and movements were hard to express through traditional design methods and were possible to construct because of the technological input in his process.
Another major part of his design was experimenting with different materials that could be expressive, so he began to explore their potential. He understood that decoration in modernization was a sin and rethought the approach to humanize a building. Also, with the kind of buildings he was designing with significant curvilinear façades, he had to make a conscious choice in his material choice. An unconventional material, titanium was used for the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao. His initial idea was to use steel, but he had to settle for a different one due to the extreme reflectivity of the material. He stumbled upon a piece of titanium in his office and decided to use it. The material also favoured the cost and building plan as it was thinner and lighter and cost three times less than steel. Later, when he designed the Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles, California, the material caused a significant problem. Due to the high degree of reflection in steel, the nearby areas of the hall were heated immensely, and the temperature rise was significant. Later Gehry declared it as a construction failure, and the last-minute changes in the curves of the building, the façade of the hall was mattified post-construction, which added to the extra cost of the building. A similar fault in the design and material selection was seen in Stata Centre MIT. The building persistently leaked developed mould growth in various parts of the brick exterior elevations, and the sliding of snow from the roof became a hazard for the people. MIT sued Gehry for the same, and these issues were also described as construction errors by him. There have been similar cases with a few of his other buildings, like the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle and Dancing House in Prague.
Gehry’s most famous project, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, received a fair amount of criticism from the locals and the media. ‘The museum was opened 20 years ago this month by the king and queen of Spain since it has become the most influential building of modern times. It has given its name to the “Bilbao effect” — a phenomenon whereby cultural investment plus showy architecture is supposed to equal economic uplift for cities down on their luck. It is the father of “iconic” architecture, the prolific progenitor of countless odd-shaped buildings the world over. However, rarely, if ever, have the myriad wannabe Bilbao has matched the original.’
The Bilbao effect might be famous, but it is here that it could be truly tested. Those cities around the globe hoping a brand-name museum will save them should be observing. “The Guggenheim Bilbao was a rare occurrence,” says museum consultant Maria Fernandez Sabau. “There was an incredible confluence of amazing, talented people. You had a museum that was hungry to expand, available land for cheap, a government with money, an architect itching to make a statement, and a city that desperately needed a new reason to exist. You cannot just buy that.”
Gehry’s architecture is iconic and has become the defining part of the city despite these few shortcomings. According to Gehry, “Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness.” His buildings are not conventionally contextual, and they stand out from the surrounding, which grabs people’s attention as they see it as something different. This idea of always being different and not blending in has grabbed many controversies and criticism towards his architecture. Frank Gehry is undoubtedly one of the greatest architects of our time, but Gehry’s architecture entails greater responsibilities with such a great name. Gehry’s architecture has brought significant changes in society and fraternity, and we need more timeless architectural pieces which culminate art in architecture. As every coin has two sides, Gehry’s architectural approach depicts the same and has served the greater good multiple times.
