ARCHITECTURE MONOGRAPHS

Frank Gehry
An Architecture of Joy

Michael Blackwood Productions offers two films about Gehry - Frank Gehry: An Architecture of Joy and Frank Gehry. Frank Gehry captures the architect at a pivotal point in his career; when he is moving beyond private homes and is starting to get larger institutional commissions and projects, such as Santa Monica Place. The film features interviews with several of Gehry's clients as well as Los Angeles artists with whom Gehry is sympathetic.

Frank Gehry: An Architecture of Joy explores Gehry's accomplishments since 1990 when he started working with the Dassault Katia computer program. Katia has allowed him to develop the fluid building style that has catapulted him to his current stature as one of the greatest architects of our day. We visit, along with Gehry and his clients, the Vitra Museum at Weil Am Rhein - his first European commission, the Bilbao Guggenheim, the Frederick R. Weisman Museum in Minneapolis, and the Energy Center at Bad Oeynhausen, Germany. Throughout the film we return to the construction of the DG Bank Conference Center in Berlin's Pariser Platz, considered by Gehry to be one of his most important works.

Background

Frank Gehry's tour de force - the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain is perhaps the most written about, talked about, photographed and consequently familiar architectural projects in recent memory. Its sinuous, flowing shape; use of unorthodox materials and exuberant expression are typical of Gehry's work. The Guggenheim, Bilbao is the result of years of experimentation with materials, hashing out of concepts and mastery of sophisticated CAD and aerospace engineering programs, yet still references the freeform vernacular architecture of Southern California. An appreciation for American kitsch - the strip commercial mall, fast food, suburbia and the movies has allowed Gehry to express himself more freely in his work. His philosophy holds that architecture should never be too precious; instead it should express feeling and joy.

While Gehry was schooled in the Modernist tradition at the University of Southern California and later at Harvard, he is neither a Modernist nor a Post-Modernist. He has always been aligned with the artistic community in L.A. - Ed Moses, Billy Al Bengston, and Ron Davis, and has said that he feels more comfortable with artistic concerns than architectural programs. To Gehry there is no division between architecture and art - after all he points out - Michelangelo built buildings. It is the artistic expression of a building, its form and its sculptural qualities, that occupy his work.

In Frank Gehry, Gehry describes being exposed to Japanese classical architecture in the 1950's via his teachers at USC, many of whom were returning GI's. The Eastern aesthetic has an immediate appeal to him that he understood better than Western classicism. The Japanese wood craft architecture had associations with Southern California that were familiar to him. While studying at Harvard he was introduced to Gropius, the Bauhaus, Mies and Le Corbusier, but the modernist tradition did not interest him. After moving back to Los Angeles Louis Kahn became popular and Gehry became an admirer of his work. Another great influence was Frank Llyod Wright. Gehry is especially caught up with the romantic notion of Wright as the iconoclast, setting forth on his own creative path - the lone "hero architect."
In 1962 Gehry opened up his own practice in Santa Monica. His became known as an architect who constructed small buildings and homes using unorthodox materials that were affordable. He also gained a reputation for collaborating with his clients in the creative process, a policy that he still adheres to today. "The client is the way I jump off the cliff…The client makes the difference." Gehry feels the client will always hold him in check when he "steps off the cliff" creatively. The client will act as his security blanket, yet hopefully bring new ideas into the process.

With the 1997-78 renovation of his own home in Santa Monica, Gehry truly found his own architectural vocabulary. This opportunity to explore his own theories and ideas was invaluable to the development of his professional style. With this project, the modest home that Gehry and his wife purchased appears intact, but is wrapped in the new structure. This juxtaposition makes both houses more interesting. He incorporated unorthodox, ordinary materials into the construction, such as corrugated metal, chain link fence and plywood. He believes that no material is intrinsically ugly; what is important is how it is used. By using materials that are usually employed on the outside of a building in the interior he toyed with the concept of inside and outside.

Gehry received his first European commission in 1987 for the Vitra International Manufacturing Facility and Design Museum in Weil Am Rhein, Germany. This building proved to be a turning point for him, as he moved its design beyond the traditional rectilinear shape and into a more sculptural form. Later, as an aid in the design and construction of these new sculptural buildings, Gehry and his firm discovered CATIA (computer aided three-dimensional interactive application) which helped facilitate the dauntingly complex production and engineering of the structures.

At the 1985 Venice Biennale Frank Gehry, staged a performance piece in collaboration with Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, entitled "Il Corso del Coltello" (The Course of the Knife). In this piece Gehry assumed the role of the iconoclast Frankie P. Toronto. This figure sported a clownish costume with an amalgam of classical architecture elements - columns, capitals, and volutes He came in, sat behind an overhead projector, and began to graffiti his own drawings onto the projected images of revered Venetian buildings. In doing so he was expressing the idea that the architect must perform the violent act of destroying the past in order to move towards the future. Gehry sees the architect as a breaker of tradition who must find his own way, yet still remain in collaboration with other architects, past and present. As Gehry observes in the beginning of An Architecture of Joy, creativity always relates to one's mother and father, childhood and birth. The artist tries to move beyond his or her precursor, but ultimately must find his or her own expression.