Frank Gehry and Thinking Beyond Paradigms

The excerpts that follow are the comments of 82 year old architect, interviewed formagazine (Dec 2011 issue), which I just read for the first time in a cafe.

Architect Frank Gehry : on buildings and ideals.

The excerpts that follow are the comments of 82 year old architect Frank Gehry, interviewed for Wallpaper magazine (Dec 2011 issue), which I just read for the first time in a cafe. What he has to say holds parallel for me in light of my recent experience of putting my collaborations with Brian Eno 'out there' in a public space, and the kinds of commentary it evokes. Italics are Frank Gehry throughout this post, with normal text comments from me.

What's happening in the world today is everything is iconic. It seems that we're starting the baby steps of a new language or a new paradigm (for city building).

I feel this very profoundly applies to the world of music and many other classifications in art and wider society, 'post-iconic' is an ironic title befitting it. For now, the built environment around 'art' is box-like and still 'designer' shiny, and work seems expected to stand in this chrome landscape when it is 'released', where it must be confident and sturdy and very definitely 'like something'. It must immediately stand recognisably in its neighbourhood. (Philip Glass finds this with his opera, too, the amazing Satyagraha returns again to remind us the world can be imagined differently)

Responses to the new 'building' have to fit the neighbourhood too. It is a strange world, or half-world, that may have had its day, but cannot be replaced just like that. Increasingly we recognise the 'icon' language that once presented each new release is now a tired format in much the same way that we recognise something 'iconic' becomes dated immediately on the production line of icons. In New York terms, perhaps the Occupy Wall Street Movement is saying this too, in among the skyscrapers.

On Context

The professionals that know my work consider me a contextualist because I spend a lot of time thinking about the environment that I am working in. I try to respect the neighbouring buildings and not to overpower them or talk down to them. You might not like the building thats next to you, but it is there. You don't criticise the building, but in your actions make a continuum. So I try to do that.

Borrowing from the metaphor of cityscape, for any of us that make something, all our building can do is stand there, or as Frank Gehry says,

You try to make the one building you do resonate beyond its perimeter and create a response, hopefully.

Create a response, hopefully. In terms of there being an environment which allows creativity and doesn't make it all into similarly shaped boxes, Gehry playfully suggests that a 'benign dictator' is the best way to get a city planned that champions longevity and creativity over just 'getting it up and selling it'. I won't try to stretch comparisons here, but just say that in a world where the bottom line encourages so much, the idea of a benign dictator instead of conservative taste makers can sound beguiling, as a fantasy.

Gehry mentions Robert Moses, controversial overseer of New York but beyond this meditates on a more long sighted and imaginative approach to decorating our planet, and being able to make new 'buildings' that can stand proudly in their own image, and to achieve that:

We're asking for a pretty sophisticated public and bureaucracy (and private sector investors) to come up with a model and there's nobody doing it. Chunks of it, but we've drained a lot of the idealism out of the equation for some reason.

It was New York that inspired 'pour it out', and the city as an entity that has grabbed my attention so often as a writer; and it is the city which seems to be the future model in which most of us will live. Setting these up for a long time, not just a good time, makes more sense than ever at the moment. The added 'cost' or 'investment' involved, whether it be building, street mural or song is something that can play out in the longer term in positive ways, I'm willing to listen to an 82 year old on that one.

Article from online notebook : http://rickholland.posterous.com/

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