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LTC 205-2003 CITY OF MIAMI BEACH Office of the City Manager Letter to Commission No. ak:lS- an:>3 m From: Mayor David Dermer and Members of the City Commission Jorge M. Gonzalez a A I~ City Manager f"" U NWS SOUNDSP~ E ARCHITECT - ARTICLES Date: September 3,2003 To: Subject: Attached please find several articles regarding Frank Gehry and some of his recent projects. Frank Gehry is the architect for the proposed NWS Sounds pace project. If you have any questions, please contact me. JMG\CMC\rar F:lcmgr\$ALLIL TC-031NWS SoundspaceArticles.doc Frank Gehry - Great Buildings Online Page 1 of3 11 Costa Mesa Apartments Free apartment locating service. We find great rentals with no hassles. www.costa-mesa-apartments.com New York Architect INARCH Architecture provides design solutions for clients worldwide. http://www.inarch.net Architect Frank Gehry ~ Great Buildinas Works Search - Advanced Search - Buildinas - Architects - Tvoes - Places - 3D Models - Pix - ArchitectureWeek - ~ .. American Center, at Paris, France, 1988. California Aerospace Museum, at Los Angeles, CA, 1982 to 1984. Edgemar Development, at Santa Monica, CA, 1984. Experience Music Project, at Seattle, Washington, 1999 to 2000. Fishdance Restaurant, at Kobe, Japan, 1986 to 1989. Gehry House, at Santa Monica, California, 1979 and 1987. Goldwyn Branch Library, at Hollywood, CA, 1982. Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, at Bilbao, Spain, 1997. Herman Miller Facilities, at Rocklin, CA, 1985. Hollywood Bowl, at Hollywood, CA, 1970 to 1982. Joseph Magnin Store, at Costa Mesa, CA, 1968. Loyola University Law School, at Los Angeles, CA, 1981 to 1984. Los Angeles Children's Museum, at Los Angeles, CA, 1979. Norton House, at Venice, CA, 1983. O'Neill Hay Barn, at San Juan Capistrano, CA, 1968. Ron Davis Studio and House, at Malibu, CA, 1970 to 1972. Rouse Company Headquarters, at Columbia, MD, 1974. Ruscha House, at 29 Palms, CA, 1977. Santa Monica Place, at Santa Monica, CA, 1973 to 1980. Schnabel Residence, at Brentwood, CA, 1986. University of Minnesota Art Museum, at Minneapolis, MN, 1990. Venice Beach House, at Venice, CA, 1986. Vitra Design Museum, at Weil-am-Rhein, Germany, 1987 to 1989. Walt Disney Concert Hall, at Los Angeles, CA, 1989. Winton Guest House, at Wayzata, Minnesota, 1984 to 1986. Wosk Residence, at Beverly Hills, CA, 1982. Yale Psychiatric Institute, at New Haven, CT, 1985 to 1989. Venice Beach House, Venice, California. Biography Frank Gehry (b. Toronto, Ontario, Canada 1929) Frank Gehry was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1929. He studied at the Universities of Southern California and Harvard, before he established his first practice, Frank O. Gehry and Associates in 1963. In 1979 this practice was succeeded by the firm Gehry & Krueger Inc. Over the years, Gehry has moved away from a conventional commercial practice to a artistically directed atelier. His deconstructed architectural style began to http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Frank _ Gehry .html 9/3/2003 Frank Gehry - Great Buildings Online Page 2 of3 emerge in the late 1970s when Gehry, directed by a personal vision of architecture, created collage-like compositions out of found materials. Instead of creating buildings, Gehry creates ad-hoc pieces of functional sculpture. Gehry's architecture has undergone a marked evolution from the plywood and corrugated-metal vernacular of his early works to the distorted but pristine concrete of his later works. However, the works retain a deconstructed aesthetic that fits well with the increasingly disjointed culture to which they belong. In the large-scale public commissions he has received since he converted to a deconstructive aesthetic, Gehry has explored the classical architecture themes. In these works he melds formal compositions with an exploded aesthetic. Most recently, Gehry has combined sensous curving forms with complex de constructive massing, achieving significant new results. References Robert A. M. Stem. Modem Classicism. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1988. ISBN 0-8478-0848-3. NA682.C55. P90. Dennis Sharp. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Architects and Architecture. New York: Quatro Publishing, 1991. ISBN 0-8230-2539-X. NA40.I45. p62. Details Recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, 1990. Recipient of the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal, 1999. Frank O. Gehry & Associates Inc 1520-B Cloverfield Boulevard Santa Monica, CA 90404 USA vox 310 828 6088 fax 310 828 2098 Resources Sources on Frank Gehry Kurt W. Forster, Hadley Soutter Arnold, Francesco Dal Co. Frank O. Gehry : The Complete Works. Monacelli Press, September 1998. ISBN 1-8852-5463-6. - A beautiful book with multiple Five Star reviews from Amazon.com readers. Available at Amazon.com Frank Gehry Pritzker Prize - Several pages of good background infonnation, at the Pritzker Prize site. I~I Find books about Frank Gehry Search the RIBA architecture library catalog for more references on Frank Gehry Web Resources L. ks F kG h In on ran e ry http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Frank_Gehry.html 9/3/2003 Frank Gehry - Great Buildings Online Page 3 of3 Coogle- Search the web for Frank Gehry We appreciate your suggestions for links about Frank Gehry. .... Great Buildings Search I Model Viewing Tips I Free 3D I DesignWorkshop I Support I Discussion I Books ..... I ArchitectureWeek ~ Please support our sponsor, and visit the CAD Outpost. Design better and present faster with Design Workshop@ Classic in live 3D for just $79.95! ~ .III Quick Search by name of Building, Architect or Place: Examples: "Parthenon", I'COf'h"" "lie/sink," Advanced Search Send this to a friend I Contributing I Linking In I Credits I Media Kit I Photo Licensing I Suggestions <0 1994-2003 Kevin Matthews and Artifice. Inc. All Rights Reserved. http://www.GreatBui/dings.com!architects/Frank_Gehry.htm/ http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Frank _ Gehry .html 9/3/2003 Frank Gehry Image Tour Page I of I rm1 .. . Frank Gehry Image Tour Frank Gehry Image Tour This project by the American architect Frank Gehry marks the corner at the Jiraskuv Bridge. Officially named the 'Rasin Building,' soon after its conception it was dubbed 'Ginger and Fred,' as it dances like the famous couple Rogers and Astaire around the corner. The building definitely pinpoints some directions modern architecture can take when faced with a city that demands either 'restauration' architecture or 'new' architecture. . ~..";.' - .. . West facade . Comer facade . North facade . Glass dress . Close-up of glass paning . Bouncing and jumping Reminiscent of Mondriaan's 'Broadway Boogie W oogie' painting, finally realized in architecture. . Across the Vltava The building joins the rhythm of the street it is located on, but gives a new interpretation to the meaning 'Schwung.' . Frank Gehry's "Ginger and Fred" in Prague An article by Joseph Pesch about the significance of this building related to the history of its site. The text is available in German and English. The issue of choosing between restauration architecture and new architecture should be able to evoke some discussion, as well as the particular 'Ginger and Fred' building itself. Do you agree, don't you agree, is the building a failure or not, etc.? Post your opinion to H.H.Achten@bwk.tue.nl and it will be included on this page. To: Squares I Museums I Prague Castle I Czech Cubism I Houses I Charles Bridge I Josefov I Theaters I Churches I Furthermore To: Overview http://lava.ds.arch.tue.nI/gallery Ipraha/tgehry .html 9/3/2003 Frank Gehry designs the V ontz Center, Univ. of Cincinnati, Horizons mag Page 1 of2 . ....,. t M~';"'n RAMslted.~- JUI1€ 2001 photo/J.M.Wolf photos/Dan Davenport H...brr....,U..... I ......~~~ University of Cincinnati Horizons magalinc online edltion- Master Plan Revisited. June 2001 MASTER PLAN TOUR COMPLETED PROJECTS I HHH 7 H 10 1112 Map StOry Vontz Center for Molecular Studies Architect Frank Gehry's first all-brick building has an imaginative exterior of sloping and curving walls and an eminently practical interior. A walkable utility level between each floor permits maintenance and redesign of lab modules, without disturbing ongoing research. Besides drawing comment from The N ew York Times, Chicago Tribune and Newsweek, the unusual research facility was a feature subject in the Chronicle of Higher Education and made the cover of Wodd Architecture magazine. It is one of four new DC buildings applauded as a nationally significant local architectural landmark by The Cincinnatus Association and The Architectural Foundation of Cincinnati. Dedication: Sept. 23, 1999 Location: Martin Luther King Drive and Eden Avenue, East Campus Contains: Three floors of academic, research and office space for scientists investigating the basic causes of diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's. Includes a permanent, museum-quality display about Dr. Albert B. Sabin, UC researcher and professor of pediatrics, developer of the first oral, live-virus polio vaccine. National design firm: Frank Gehry and Associates photo/Dottie Stover http://www.horizons.uc.edu/MasterPlanIIJuneOlIMPTOURVontz.htm 9/3/2003 Frank Gehry designs the V ontz Center, Univ. of Cincinnati, Horizons mag Page 2 of2 Link: The Vontz Center for Molecular Studies Web site. View movie clips of the building and hear Gehry's comments. NEXT I MAP I TOUR contents Issue Contents I Horizons Home I Archives I About Horizons Your Comments I Subscribe I Reaister I Search Horizons University of Cincinnati I Alumni Assn. I Public Relations I Give to UC http://www.horizons.uc.edu/MasterPlanIIJuneOl/MPTOURVontz.htm 9/3/2003 Salon Brilliant Careers I Frank Gehry Page I of7 '}C#;~i~:~.i''.,.< ~~:s:~ To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > PeoDle Oct. 5, 1999 URL: htto: 1 Iwww.salon.com/oeoole/bcl 19991 10/05/aehrv Frank Gehry His titanium masterpiece in Bilbao, Spain, has put "the other Frank," architect of "the other Guggenheim" museum, on the map. BY KAREN TEMPLER "When everybody else is ready for the ending, I'm just ready to begin," Frank Gehry once wrote. "It's been the story of my life." And so it would seem. The Pritzker Prize -- commonly referred to as "the Nobel of architecture" -- is the industry's loftiest recognition. It's a lifetime achievement award, granted to a living architect whose body of work represents a superlative contribution to the field. Gehry received it in 1989, two years before the release of the frenzy-inducing Gehry Collection, an innovative line of furniture, and nearly a decade before the unveiling of his titanium masterpiece, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. the Basque capital of Spain. There's really only one architect -- Frank Lloyd Wright -- who qualifies for household-name status in America, but with the onslaught of attention following Bilbao, Gehry may yet get there. For now, he is "the other Frank" with "the other Guggenheim," and his Spanish Guggenheim is nearly as controversial as was Wright's Manhattan original. The press coverage of Bilbao has been legion. Art and architecture critics have described it as everything from "an architectural epiphany" to "a lunar lander in search of its moon." Pop culture is equally split on the issue: The TV character Frasier has expressed his distaste for the design while Mariah Carey is dancing around on its lawn in her latest video. But the tourists and architecture buffs of the world have fallen under its spell. The Basque Country Administration commissioned Gehry to design a building for its new museum that would attract visitors from around the globe, and that's exactly what it has done. Despite the city's seedy reputation, staggering murder rate and perpetual bad weather, some 2 million people have visited since the museum's opening in late 1997. http://www.salon.com/people/bc/1999/1 0/05/ gehry /print.html 9/3/2003 Salon Brilliant Careers I Frank Gehry One of the musewn guards was killed at the opening by Basque separatists trying to blow up a Jeff Koons sculpture on the grounds, but still they come. Such is the draw of Gehry's glistening abstraction of a building. In describing Gehry's "buildings" there's a tendency to employ art terms __ sculpture, collage, installation, assemblage -- because "building" just doesn't cover it. Gehry's love of architecture is about the process: the conceptualizing and mark-making and model-building, and that's what comes across in the final results. It's a rare story about Gehry's work that isn't accompanied by his wildly gestural sketches in place of the usual rigid, mathematical plans. The sketches are beguiling in their seeming lack of representation of anything other than the mysteries of Gehry's own imagination. Without the corresponding photos of the finished product, many would be indiscernible as buildings. But a story about Gehry is incomplete without them. With his shock of white hair and non-angular build, Gehry looks like the manifestation of one of his own sketches. He was born Frank Goldberg in Toronto in 1929 and spent his childhood making "little cities" out of wood scrap with his grandmother. In 1947, the family changed its name and moved to Los Angeles. He took night classes at City College and went on to get his architecture degree from the University of Southern California in 1954. Then came several years of flux -- working, serving a stint in the Army and studying urban planning for a year at Harvard before dropping out. In 1961, he moved his then-wife and two small daughters to Paris, where he worked for architects Pereira and Lickman and spent his weekends traveling to various architectural meccas, including the cathedral at Chartres and his idol Le Corbusier's Notre Dame du Haut at Ronchamps. Upon returning to America in 1962, he set up a practice with another young architect, and then in 1967 founded his current firm, Frank O. Gehry and Associates. Snubbed by his peers in the early years, Gehry found both approval and companionship among artists. He befriended Kenny Price, Ed Moses and Ron Davis (for whom Gehry built a studiolhouse) and later collaborated with sculptors Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen as well as Richard Serra. Gehry could relate to artists. He told Architectural Record (in an uncharacteristically long interview earlier this year) that he was "intellectually intrigued with their process, their language, their attitudes, their ability to make things with their own hands," whereas with fellow architects, he felt like "an outsider." Notoriety first found Gehry in the early '70s, when his Easy Edges furniture hit the market. The fully functional chairs, stools, tables and one ottoman were life-size squiggles rendered in laminated cardboard and were an instant hit, though for Gehry they were not entirely successful. He wrote in '92 that with the cardboard collection he had set out to create "the Volkswagen of furniture" -- unique, engaging design http://www.salon.com/peopleIbcl1999/1 0/05/ gehry /print.html Page 2 of7 9/3/2003 Salon Brilliant Careers I Frank Gehry that would also be economically accessible. But their commercial success made Gehry "a name" and his investor wanted to trade on that name for a higher dollar, including using Gehry himself to advertise the furniture. Gehry, a modest man, was uncomfortable with the P.R. campaign. He told J.D. Magazine that he "was freaked about going on the road and being marketed like Yves Saint Laurent. " Following Easy Edges came Rough Edges. Rugged and more abstract than the original cardboard collection, the Rough Edges pieces were produced in smaller quantities and sold at even higher prices through exclusive galleries. In 1978, after more than 20 years in the business, Gehry finally got national attention for one of his buildings, ironically, an inexpensive renovation of his own home. Gehry and his current wife, Berta (who is also CFO of Gehry's company), had bought a pink, two-story bungalow in Santa Monica, Calif., and Gehry set out to personalize it using modest, industrial materials. He enclosed the first floor in a corrugated metal sheath that looks from the street like a jagged privacy fence, then expanded the ground floor space out to meet it. He punched miscellaneous windows out of the new wall, and giant shards of glass appear to have collided into the building to form window/skylights with the tilted wood-frame supports left exposed. Concrete blocks retain a small, terraced yard. Concrete steps, a plywood stoop and spare patches of chain-link and white picket fencing all provide accents. Meanwhile, the demure pink second floor with its pristine white trim, brick chimney and black tar paper gambrel roof peeks out above the whole assemblage. The house (which was further refined in 1991) is still widely influential, as evidenced by the proliferation of corrugated-metal-and-plywood homes, interiors and restaurants over the past few years, although the progeny tend not to have the charisma of Gehry's wrapped, and rapt, pink bungalow. Gehry's house might appear hackneyed to anyone who didn't know how far his predates the most recent crop. Part of the '91 re- renovation was to provide more privacy for the family from the vanloads of architecture students who still parade past on a regular basis. The relative fame from his house led to countless commissions, a record-setting number of prizes and eventually another prominent line of furniture: the Gehry Collection by KnollStudio. Gehry detailed the painful process in his 1992 Design Quarterly essay, aptly titled "Up Everest in a Volkswagen." The designs -- several chairs, a table and an ottoman -- evolved out of an invitation a decade earlier from Rolf Fehlbaum, the director of the renowned German furniture company Vitra, to design a chair. Gehry wrote that designing a new chair was like being asked "to find the meaning of life while standing on one foot. It's like a Talmudic question." Fehlbaum wanted a simple but innovative chair in wood -- a reaction to all the high-tech and ball joints of the '70s -- that could be used as a basic side chair or in cafe settings. Gehry didn't want to just "hang http://www.salon.com/people/bc/1999/1 0/05/gehry /print.html Page 3 of7 9/3/2003 Salon Brilliant Careers I Frank Gehry another coat on four legs and a seat." He reflected for a while on wicker furniture and bushel baskets and did some experimenting but quickly gave up on the project. When Knoll approached him in '89, he told them what he'd been through with Vitra. The only way he could see it working was if Knoll would set him up in a workshop similar to that of the mythic husband-wife architect/design team of Charles and Ray Eames, which he fondly recalls visiting in his youth. Knoll took him up on it, and he accomplished everything he'd hoped in reinventing the form. Named for ice hockey terms (the Cross Check chair, the Hat Trick chair, the Power Play chair), the pieces in the Gehry Collection are made from wafer-thin strips of laminated maple, bent, woven and curled into fluid, featherweight yet sturdy forms. The chairs are variously composed of the strips woven bushel basket-style into a seat with the remaining length of each strip tilted upward to form a seat back or curled back on themselves to form arms or folded down and around to form legs and bases. The table is a round glass-top supported by a conglomeration of bent and curved strips. For the ottoman, Gehry wove the strips into a pillow shape. Photos (and sketches, of course) of the prototypes quickly found their way into the pages of every design magazine. The Museum of Modem Art popped early production samples into a window display (three months before they were scheduled to debut at the American Craft Museum across the street), instantly elevating them to objet status. They were an instant sensation, and Gehry found himself, once again, pleased with his solution yet disappointed with the price. But if the idea of reinventing the chair seemed daunting to Gehry, he apparently never felt the same trepidation about the house, the office building or the museum. Gehry's buildings defy classification -- he's a deconstructivist, a modernist, a postmodernist. His early work doesn't prepare you for his mid-career work, which doesn't prepare you for his current work. The sheer number of buildings he has produced is stunning, especially in light of the fact that, even with a staff of 120, he designs each building himself. And his firm is breaking virtual ground as well, pioneering the use of advanced software that allows the engineers to give the contractors more precise mathematical descriptions of whatever amorphic forms Gehry has dreamed up, closing the previously windy gap between design and construction. We all know a building when we see one, and there's generally no mystery about the developmental stages. The sketches and plans are drawings of buildings. The models are miniature buildings. And the buildings are buildings. But with Gehry's work, the sketches, models and even the final edifices look less like buildings and more like the curious rumblings of a creative mind that tend to be classified as art. In fact, most successful are the buildings that look like gigantic public sculpture that somebody had the forethought to hollow out to make use of the interior spaces. http://www.salon.com/people/bc/1999/1 0/05/ gehry /print.html Page 4 of7 9/3/2003 Salon Brilliant Careers I Frank Gehry The 1991 Chiat/Day building in Venice, Calif., is a sculpture within a sculpture. Gehry essentially devised two buildings: a three-story white metal curve that evokes a ship's prow, and a copper-plated abstract forest. Meeting the two in the middle is a pair of three-story binoculars originally conceived by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen for another building the three were collaborating on. The binoculars stand on their lenses, the space in between serves as the entrance to the underground garage and each ocular lens is a skylight into the conference rooms the sculpture houses. One of Gehry's more whimsical projects is the '96 Nationale- Nederlanden building in the Czech Republic, colloquially referred to as "the Fred and Ginger building." The building forms one corner among several blocks of ancient, decorative five- and six-story structures in central Prague. Gehry's building is similar in surface and color to the surrounding buildings. The ground floor is glass and the remaining floors are stacked on top, covered with undulating rows of windows. At the corner the structure erupts into two vertical cylindrical forms slightly taller than the rest of the building. One cylinder ("Fred") matches the rest of the building, sits atop a post, is slightly flared at top and bottom and is topped with a tangled ball of copper. The second cylinder ("Ginger") is a sheer column of glass, pinched in at the "waist," flaring more drastically at the second floor into a "skirt" and perched atop several gracefully curved posts. At the fifth floor, a small canopy juts out from Ginger's waist toward Fred in an equally abstract reference to the arms of the dancing couple. The natives of Bilbao have taken to referring to the Guggenheim as "the artichoke," which is the best description on record of the abstract titaniwn volwnes that form the central focal point of the building. The artichoke is complemented by nearly rectangular volwnes of limestone and large, slanted expanses of gridded glass. A long, low volwne extends out from the central mass, along the river and under a freeway bridge, sprouting up again on the other side. Like so many of Gehry's buildings, it seems to embrace everything around it, while also sitting in stark contrast to it all. The interior spaces have also been heralded. Gehry is, himself, among the few critics who feel the interior flaw is in the scale of the massive main gallery. There is some concern about the dearth of art in the world that would not be dwarfed by the space. Gehry would like to install a few extra walls, but the musewn administrators don't have any plans to modify it. In the words ofCal-Poly architecture professor Tom Fowler, "The musewn has a godly scale to it, but is also very intimate regarding nooks and crannies to explore and hide in. It's like inhabiting a cubist painting." But the Bilbao Guggenheim is not only an impressive piece of functional sculpture, it has also changed the way people think about the field of architecture. Gehry has proven that people will travel halfway around the world to look at a building as well as its contents. It stands as evidence that a building can put a town on the map. And it has http://www.salon.comlpeople/bc/1999/1 0/05/ gehry /print.html Page 5 of7 9/3/2003 Salon Brilliant Careers I Frank Gehry companies and organizations all over the globe thinking of architects as brand names and wanting to wear one for themselves. So while it has garnered a great deal of fame for Gehry, it has also done much to renew interest in architecture and enliven the ongoing debate about architecture's role in our society. Despite all his success, Gehry continues to feel misunderstood. He makes a lot of seemingly random comments these days about how his buildings don't leak, a reaction, no doubt, to the news that part of his 1989 Rocklin, Calif., manufacturing complex for Herman Miller (age- old rival of Knoll) is being demolished and replaced by a design from another firm. Apparently the centerpiece of the complex -- a 70-foot steel trellis wrapped in copper -- is leaking and staining the company cafeteria, which it straddles. Gehry insists the flaw was in the execution and not in his design. But it goes beyond that incident. After nearly four decades of being odd man out among his peers, Gehry has developed a tinge of defensiveness. He wants to make it clear to everyone that he's not "just making shapes," that he designs from the inside out and often doesn't even make a sketch until after a period of scale experimentation with the internal space requirements of a project. He's upset that the roofers at Bilbao allowed polyurethane to drip down the titanium and -- despite his pleading -- didn't clean it off until it was too late, which has led some to comment that he didn't know what he was doing with the titanium. And his newest fear is that another of his projects, the proposed Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, will be perceived as "son of Bilbao, II even though it was designed a decade ago. After seeing Bilbao and before finally agreeing to proceed with the project, Disney asked that the exterior of the building (a cross between Bilbao and the Sydney Opera House) be switched from limestone to metal. Still, while Gehry's defensiveness may be understandable, it's hardly necessary anymore. In 1998, Gehry finally got what had been alluding him all these years: the recognition of his peers. The American Institute of Architects awarded him the Gold Medal, which Gehry described to Architectural Record as "a wonderful honor ." It's like in your family: you know they don't think very much of you and then, all of a sudden, you find out they love you. That's how it feels." This year saw the publication of the 596-page "Frank O. Gehry: The Complete Works." which is as premature as was his lifetime achievement award from the Pritzker people. Gehry & Associates has a mile-long list of projects in the hopper. Among them, the Disney Concert Hall, scheduled to open in 2002; a new aluminum stacking chair for Knoll; a new wing for the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, which he said at a press conference "looks like a bunch of colored pieces of paper"; a new bulding for the SoHo branch of the Guggenheim; and an extensive plan to do even more for Panama than he's done for Bilbao. There's no reason to believe that, when all is said and done, his http://www.salon.com/people/bc/ 1999/ 1 0/05/gehry /print.html Page 6 of7 9/3/2003 Salon Brilliant Careers I Frank Gehry Guggenheim will stand out as his masterwork. After all, this is Frank Gehry. Chances are he's just getting started. salon.com I Oct. 5, 1999 Salon I Search I Archives I Contact Us I Table Talk I Ad Info Arts & Entertainment I Books I Comics I Life I News I People Politics I Sex I Tech & Business I Audio The Free Software Proiect I The Movie paae Letters I Columnists I Salon Plus Copyright @ 2000 Salon.com All rights reserved. http://www.salon.com/peoplelbc/ 1999/ 10/05/ gehry /print.html Page 70f7 9/3/2003 The Arts mbe New lork iEime~ YT Bl THURSDAY, AUGUST 21,2003 Fifteen years in the making, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles prepares for its opening. Above. swirling forms typical of its architect. Frank Gehry. Right, the auditorium. Far right, curves continue into the public spaces. Hollywood Ending For Music Palace Gehry's Hall to Open (Cue Soaring Strings) By BERNARD WEINRAUB LOS ANGELES. Aug. 16 - Lillian Disney. the widow of Walt Disney, favored the music of Lawrence Welk to Beethoven and Brahms. But that didn't deter her in 1987 from giving $50 million for a new music hall in Los Angeles. The gift was intended as not only a tribute to her husband, a classical music lover, but also as an expression of faith in the artistic and creative dynamism of 21st-century Los Ange- les. "Mother wanted to do something wonder- ful for Walt, wonderful for the dty," recalled Diane Disney Miller, the Disneys' lone surviv- ing child. Mrs. Disney's wish is now about to be fulfilled. Almost complete, the Wait Disney Concert Hall is set to open in October - six years later than originally planned - with a set of three gala evenings, glittering gatherings of Los Angeles Philharmonic seat holders and musicians, movie stars and entertainers, and the philanthropists who were instrumental in bringing the hall about. They will come to Los Angeles to celebrate not only the concert hall but in many ways the city itself - for having finally built it. For this is a grand and expen~ sive project that almost never happened. Hopes were naturally high when, more than a decade ago, Frank Gehry, the locally based architect, was selected from a field of 72 international competitors to design the concert hall, on Grand Avenue, atop Bunker Hill. The building, audacious with its swooping curves, was set to dominate downtown Los Angeles and to do for the city what the Opera House did for Sydney, Australia, and what Mr. Gehry's own Guggenheim museum was about to do for Bilbao, Spain. To its creators, the hall was to be as emblematic of Los Angeles as the Hollywood sign. But the project came close to collapse from 1994 to 1996. Spiraling costs, poor man- agement, disagreements over the complex de- sign and California's troubled economy led to a halt in construction. "By 1996 this project was dead, ready to be buried," said Eli Broad. the billionaire businessman and philanthropist and a top power broker in the city, who helped salvage it. "People around town thought it was a black hole that would never be built." The gala evenings in October wlll give the drama perhaps a filling Hollywood ending (though little money for the hall came from Hollywood itself). Even more, the opening may give the city not just a cultural lift but a psychological one as well. "What does this do for the city?" said Esa- Pekka Salonen, the Finnish~born music direc- tor of the Philharmonic, a tousle-haired and still boyish figure at 45. "l'm quite amused by the fact that the hottest ticket in L.A. is a classical music/architectural event, not some Hollywood thing. I'm going to enloy that. It won't happen again." The opening may also help alleviate thE." city's feeHng of inferiority to New York, that it is a backwater of the arts. "In a project this size. which is always complicated and involves politics, it's impressive that people willed this Continued on Page 5 USTENING CLOSELY TO A NEW ARTS CENTER Judging Frank Gehry's new performance cen- ter at Bard College. Critic's Notebook, Page 5. ,rl T< 1n n- I[i --' t I BOOKS OF THE TIMES -'-:"u }L',~: I . 1.5 >~ J p; i C ! ~ ~ .s g " f~ .. C 0( oS ~~~iE~~~I~i!l~~ ~~;i=~ ~j~l~!E~ii~i ;a--gsZ"g f...~.o;"6 l!'"OI",;J ..~~"c ,;:, ..dl ;~e.'~~lt~!Il=~i .a!=~'" J!-~;13~~8~-g ~=68~ga~E t"_f ~,,"~"" ~~~~~_-~""e. ~" .-" -"c "&aC~ ~~.F"" ~ ~<:> "..I......~. !C~~$~ -c~~~ ~ _~- .~. C~ .=~~~.~~-~ ~~~~ o~~<~g~~~~ .E~~~_ .i~ .~~.;~e~~- bO >. 8. 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E i.o e iii eG i ~ ~ >. ~ ~a ~.. ~ oS:. 41 ff ~ ~;~f~~~~~a~;~~t~~:~~~i~~~~!j!~i~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~i~~~~~;~j~~i~ " l '" ~ '" ~ ;;: E o ct " .. ~ .5 ;: C t.I oS ..:g ~io-ti!! 'at !ii-::aS'!f! ~ ~5~-!Q.~8 ~ ...!t:i It) r:a:::: 8 1!-g'Ei5~::e~ "'0 . ~.ca"t:J'~i"~i lii I g!l~~~..::e'_1;l i! ~,g"O;; ~ -~ :s! c i .! ~.~ i B ~ ii~ ~ .I kl.s ~-i:g &C3'O e'O =: .5 E (/l ~ 1lO~ i ",~::ell_h1ij~e '1: Q,I.8 et.i ;; ~ ! I ~~ II ~ ,,::e,8=._~.1! oC -5 ~.s.E,5 i:ii- 68 The Herald WW'w.herald.com FRIDAY,AUGUST8,2003 JOHN S. KNIGHT (1894-1981) [hr iUinmi Hrrnl~ JAMES~. KNIGHT (1909-19911 ALBERTO IBARGDEN PUBLISHER t TOM FIEDLER EXECUTIVE EDITOR t. JOE OGLESBY EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR . MARK - MUSIC ~ AND MORE . BEACH FACILITY Will ENHANCE COMMUNITY The New World Symphony is tak- ing a bold step to refresh how orchestral music is taught, learned, performed and appreciated in South Florida. By presenting alternate modes of performance and communication - enhanced by the Internet and other electronic media - symphony lead- ers are convinced that they can culti- vate new audiences, serve the wider community and remain financially strong. Through Soundspace, a $40-mil- lion cutting-edge facility, New World seeks to bring music education and performance into the 21st century. Such impressive vision leaves the New World poised again to set the pace for others to follow. Bravo. We commend the Miami Beach Commission for its part in the sym- phony's big step forward. Last week, Beach commissioners approved a deal in which Soundspace would be built behind Lincoln Theatre, the symphony's headquarters. In approving the plan, commis- sioners sent a strong message that the performing arts are integral to a city's vitality - and that the more access people have to the arts, the better. Soundspace will anchor a new city park - green space that the city sorely needs. Outdoor video screens will let passersby share in the perfor- mances indoors. New World will raise funds to foot the construction bill - at least $40 million. The city will charge the sym- phony $1 a year in rent for the land. The building has a superstar archi- tect, Frank Gehry, and will be wired Soundspaceto transform music education, performance. with sophisticated, interactive media that will allow a master cellist in Vienna to teach local symphony members in real time and expose audiences to contemporary compos- ers and performances as they occur in other cities. The building also can be used, for example, for firefighters and police to "attend" homeland-se- curity seminars being held in remote locations. With about a 700-seat capacity, Soundspace will complement, not compete with, other performing-arts venues. The New World Symphony is one of the few South Florida cultural institutions that has benefited from significant contributions to its endowment, principally from bequests by Ted Arison, who founded Carnival Cruise Lines. That endowment allows the New World Symphony the flexibility to go out on a limb with a project like Sound- space. That sort of giving doesn't happen every day. But we believe that it will happen more often, as people who have made fortunes in South Florida decide before they pass on to give back by helping to build institutions in the community that helped them succeed. z r.;; 0 c:; m '- '- ~ f--- '- U - 1:;) UJ (/) - ~ c - E o ~~ !O ~ = ., ~ I It:: E . 81-' -d · "ii fUJ ~ u 'a ClI ... CD 'a l . :I: . ~ .... .... e'd -= ~ o -= Q. e ~ '- .R ~ ~ ~ = . .... ~ Q. ,..... e'd Q) ~ ~ .... ~ '0 -= C.) e'd Q) = c::! cu ~ CII t:: >-::::: o .... CII 0Il- cu .... :.:= (I) 's. ~ 8 III ~ :::l ~ ::s cu = III = 0 u bO.... 'iil aJ o .... g cu ~ .... 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QJ tU gf III ..c::.... ::s _~::e ti"5a -g 'Q) ::s.c: en c: ctS - c.. t- O) c: "00 .- en 0) -0 -0 Q) c: 3: o c: Q) a: 6~ Oct :3= ~ o CD ~ >~til en ct '- W::z: ~ ~S2@l z = 8 40.2 > z: .S' al ct i\; . SOUNDSCAPE, FROM 18 help revitalize the east end of Lincoln Road, draw a new kind of tourist sophisticate, enhance the city's cultural life and stamp Miami Beach indelibly with the imprimatur of a Frank Gehry project. Commissioners, who voted 6-1 in favor of the deal, appeared willing to give Gehry, one of the world's most sought-after architects, wide latitude in planning the build- ing and the surrounding site. Gehry is also expected to design the building, though that has not been finalized. "Here we have an opportu- nity to do something truly spectacular for the city," Com- missioner Simon Cruz said. "I would like to give this individ- ual a carte blanche for some- thing that could be great for Miami Beach:' To do so, commission back- ers and symphony supporters overcame vocal opposition from some residents con- cerned about the loss of exist- ing parking and the cost to the city of replacing it. Under the agreement, the city will pro- vide about $4 million toward the cost of building a 320-space public garage behind the new hall. One commissioner, Richard Steinberg, agreed with critics. "We've been asked to pay for your parking," he told sym- phony supporters before cast- ing the sole vote against the agreement. "We have a short- age of parking funds citywide. To me that is not responsible." NEW GARAGES But many opponents were mollified by two hours of dis- cussion and debate. much of it centered on the parking issue. Bernard Zyscovich, an archi- tect hired by the city to devise a new master plan for the adja- cent Convention Center area who is collaborating on the Gehry plan, said construction of new garages before the first brick for the symphony's building was laid would ensure no net loss of parking spaces at any point. Eventually, Zyscovich said, the Convention Center area will end up with about 2,000 more parking spots than the existing 7,000 spaces. Had the city declined to contribute money toward the new parking garage, symphony Executive Director Howard Herring said, it would have killed the deal. Herring empha- sized the benefits the new hall would bring to Beach resi- dents, including the chance to expand an existing program of free music lessons to children from surrounding schools. "I look forward to continue working with everybody in this community to create a sound space that will serve the educational needs of the New World Symphony, the cultural aspirations of Miami Beach and all its residents," Herring said after the vote. The innovative hall- back- ers say there is no building like it in the world - would anchor a proposed new city park at Washington Avenue and 17th Street that is to serve as the grand, green urban gathering space Miami Beach lacks. A large video screen on the building's eastern flank will broadcast live perforDlances from inside Soundscape. or around the world to viewers in the park. The han will be wired to a new, lightning-fast and less- crowded version of the Inter- net - Internet 2 - which the symphony is already using to experiment with real-time per- formances and classes with performers, teachers and stu- dents in different cities. IMPROVED FACILITIES Soundscape Ylould also pro- vide greatly improved facilities for the New World, which trains recent music-school graduates for full-time orches- tral jobs. It would supplement the group's existing, acousti~ cally limited Lincoln Theater, but would not affect the sym~ phony's commitment to per~ forming at the Performing Arts Center now under construc- tion in Miami. Gehry has already begun blocking out the site plan, Zys- covich said at a public forum on the project Tuesday night. Because they hav.e pledged to build a parking garage first, construction on Soundscape is unlikely before 2007. Herring said. It would take two to three years to complete. At about 22,000 square feet, the building won't be any- where near as large as Gebry's vast Bilbao Guggenheim, Zys- covich said. But the impact on Miami Beach and the international cultural landscape, backers say, could be immeasurable. The commission must still . vote on Sept. 10 to conflIID. the deal. It also must sign a 99-year lease with the symphony. Under the deal approved Wednesday, the building will become city property once the lease expires. "We are giving Miami Beach a Frank Gehry building," Her- ring said. Herald staff writer Nicole White contributed to this report. A Mighty Monument to Music MSN Home I My MSN I Hotmail I Search I Shopping I Money I People & Chat Stop Snoring! ,~ , &'luThllhlJ , ~:tmihl ,illm-!Em , 'ilJJ.:!ii1'~ 00,tJ.iJ!!) , [Hoollil ~ D1,!) ,~Jg:tihnlln:wir , ~lIlmJl'l;Jl1 , 'i11Jl !S]I!I'!ll , ,~.i11!!!:.1l}nilt!ai:'i ,OJ)ll.~w Music for your eyes: The Walt Disney Music Concert Hall designed by Frank Gehry QwenOex.-2 online yetlow pages ! Find a Local Business A Mighty Monument to Music Frank Gehry's swooping, soaring Walt Disney Concert Hall is the architect's Masterwork-and the mirror of his own restless energies By Cathleen McGuigan NEWSWEEK Aug. 18 issue - When the conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Esa- Pekka Salonen, took the podium of the new Walt Disney Concert Hall one morning in late June, anticipation hung in the air. Fewer than a dozen people were scattered about the 2,265-seat auditorium, including the architect, Frank Gehry. . E.MAIL THIS ..~ AIMl"'" -.... . COMPLETE STORY ~ http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/950408 .asp?Osl=- 22 Page 1 of6 Advertise Can race the tray. iii... . . . . I . I . I I I STAR I- Thtc :lirlin<: I Newsw8t Entertair . Love, 0 . How to Boys 9/3/2003 A Mighty Monument to Music . ,\/ I 'l\ I t-< .. lkItJmIt qUllllan.on autllm and join the tll< on Thtn.J Sept. 4 at noon El. L __'\ T [: ...-.,. T ...~ Ton II: .... >MOnE .........11 I _ .. MIllie 511l'r'1 NFL PrevIew .. '1.....: Debate Advice for Dr. DIlen .. Tho Dean IAlIllhlne . Buy Life Insurance . MSNBC Hot List . Yellow Pages . expedia.com . Shopping "III UIlI ,'i' . ' OUTSIDE, THE GORGEOUS billowing curves and swoops of the nearly finished stainless-steel exterior-already an L.A. landmark-shimmered. Yet this stunning building will truly succeed only if the quality of its sound matches its physical beauty. That June day marked the first time the full orchestra had played in the new hall. Salonen led the musicians into the opening bars of Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, but he soon tapped his baton, stopped and scanned the hall for Gehry. "Frank," he said, "we'll keep it." Gehry started crying. Several months earlier Gehry got so anxious about how the place would sound that he called Salonen at home one evening and asked to meet him at the unfinished hall right away. (Gehry worked closely with the Japanese acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota, who also collaborated with him on the much-praised concert hall at Bard College in New York, which opened this spring.) Salonen asked the concertmaster to come with his violin, and the man played a little Bach for them in the dim and dusty hall. There were tears that night, too. "It already sounded beautiful. We were quite shaken," Salonen recalls. "This project is emotionally huge for Frank for many reasons-the history of it, that it's his hometown, that it's music." BUT HOW GOOD DOES IT SOUND? Disney Hall will finally open this fall-16 tortured years after the late Lillian Disney, Walt's widow, instigated the project with a $50 million gift. The ultimate verdict on its acoustics will come from music critics after the gala first concert on Oct. 23. But if the building does sound as good as it looks-and early reports are enthusiastic-it will be a masterpiece, even http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/950408 .asp?Osl=-22 Page 2 of6 . ~hadO\l\ · Newsm Newswe, · Finema for Dr. [ · Onscen Baghda · Humor: With WI · Wolffe: and Afg 9/312003 A Mighty Monument to Music greater than the spectacular Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, which made Gehry an international star in 1997. Both buildings are sheathed mainly in metal (Bilbao in titanium, not steel) and employ Gehry's unique architectural language, but they're significantly different in mood and design. Where the Guggenheim lazes along a riverfront, Disney is tighter, more explosive, more urban. The one beef about Bilbao has been that it can overpower the art inside it. At Disney, the glorious architecture will be married to music, and each is destined to enrich the other. The camera loves Disney Hall, with its sexy curves and glamorous skin, rosy and golden at dusk, silvery at high noon. Rising at the crest of Bunker Hill in downtown L.A., across from the dowdy Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the philharmonic's former home, it jubilantly unfurls its fanciful forms against the mundane skyline as if to say "Here 1 am!" Gehry's good at making his architecture friendly and streetwise: along one side of the site, a cafe and bookshop will meet the sidewalk, and the grand outdoor staircase is meant to be a big front porch where people can sit and schmooze. Gehry, a weekend sailor, speaks of the design in nautical terms. "Wing on wing"-when the wind's at your back and the mainsail and jib are spread-is how he describes the shapes flanking that stair. And he extends the metaphor to the interior of the hall-"a magical barge," he calls it-that seems to float inside its silver gift-wrapping. It's a fantastic cocoon of honey- colored Douglas fir, with a ceiling of billowing wood, partly open across its "stem" so daylight seeps in- across the surprisingly flowered upholstery on the seats. ("I promised Mrs. Disney I'd do floral.") As a focus, Gehry designed an organ that looks like a grove of trees swaying in the breeze. CONFLICTS DURING CONSTRUCTION Yet for a long time, Disney Hall seemed to be cursed. (Take the name: the family had to apply to the Disney company for permission to use it.) When he won the design competition in 1988, Gehry was a maverick L.A. architect who liked to juxtapose cheap materials in vibrant, raucous, completely original ways, most notoriously in his own Santa Monica house, with its jutting chunks of plywood and corrugated metal panels. He'd never worked in the elegant limestone originally stipulated for the hall. After he got the commission, a ballooning budget, fund-raising problems and internal politics threatened to swamp the project. (Once estimated at $100 million, the hall ended up costing $274 million.) Gehry had to rework the design again http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/950408.asp?Osl=-22 Page 3 of6 9/3/2003 A Mighty Monument to Music To get the interior just right, Frank Gehry worked closely with Japanese acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota and again (well before he conceived Bilbao, by the way)-a process that made it ever more fluid and assured. Construction began, then was stopped for five years. In 1997, faced with losing control over the details of the design, Gehry nearly quit. But Diane Disney Miller, Lillian's daughter, backed him, using the last $14 million of her mother's gift as leverage against the philharmonic's building committee. "Anyway," Gehry now says with a sigh, "it got built, and that's a miracle." He's sitting in the booth of a favorite-and totally unfashionable~inerlike restaurant in Santa Monica, jet-lagged and weary. Though he's 74, Gehry shows no inclination to slow down. He works out, and he's an inveterate dieter. After cheating with fried calamari, he orders skinless chicken and iceberg lettuce spritzed with lemon juice. ("Hey, don't stop," he tells the waiter wielding the pepper mill. "That's all I got goin' here.") Once he settles in, he talks excitedly about far-flung new projects--one in an old arts district of Lisbon, maybe a town hall in Taiwan. Meanwhile, several designs are under construction closer to home-from a building at MIT to a small museum in Biloxi, Miss. Gehry is rumpled, unpretentious, down to earth. At one point, he claims he's having trouble with "this fame s-t"-which is about to ratchet up several more notches. (Recently, his firm entered a competition in France for what's billed as a "Frank Gehry-like" museum. Guess who didn't make the cut?) But like his seemingly free-form yet subtly rigorous buildings, Gehry harbors a fierce discipline and perfectionism beneath his casual demeanor. He designs by "trusting my intuition," but exhaustively re-works each scheme using cardboard or wooden models. "What interests me," he says, "is that you can be a control freak and still deliver the passion." He runs his office-with a staff of http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/950408 .asp?Osl=- 22 Page 4 of6 9/3/2003 A Mighty Monument to Music Page 5 of6 120 architects-as "a tight ship." He mentions that he loves an esoteric form of Japanese court music that he describes as "controlled chaos." WHAT NEXT?: LAMPS, WATCHES AND VODKA That's his life. After decades in Santa Monica. he's just moved his whole office south to Marina del Rey. He and his partners are launching Gehry Technologies. a company that will sell the computer program they developed to generate the precise building specifications for his irregular forms. (Neither Bilbao nor Disney could have been constructed without it- though Gehry himself never uses a computer.) He's developing a line of Gehry-brand lamps. wristwatches and vodka bottles. He' s even planning to leave his famous house and build a new one. nearer the office and his sailboat. for himself and his wife. Berta. who quietly helps run his tight ship. But with all he's got going on, Disney Hall is a defining masterwork-because of his love for music, for Los Angeles and for his art. Its roller-coaster swoops and gleaming curves seem to mirror his formidable energies and ambitions. And as he grows older, his work takes on a new urgency. "Because we're getting close to the final chapter. 1 just want to do all that stuff." he says. Last year his close friend Jay Chiat. the advertising guru. died of cancer while Gehry was away on a trip. "I got home and found this message from Jay on the answering machine:' he explains. "He said, 'I'm calling to say goodbye, and to tell you how important you've been in my life.' And then he said. 'You know, don't wait--do stuff. Do what you want to do':' As Disney Hall shows, nobody does it better. ~ 2003 Newsweek, Inc. MOlE lHWSWlIK 11m1T"'- 0Iml Love, Death, Light _nOIYI How to Out-Fox the Big Boys 0Iml Shadowlands of Slavery 0Iml Newsmakers 0Iml The Matrix Reloaded (ji5[) MSNBC Cover Page MSNBC READERS' TOP 10 http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/950408 .asp?Osl=- 22 9/3/2003 rank Gehry drives his black BMW slowly along Grand Avenue in down- town Los Angeles. The street is tom up for the construction of a huge stainless-steel- clad building, which looks from this side like a futuristic sailing ship. Gehry scrunch- es down in his seat so that he can see the entire eastern fa9ade of his $274 million Walt Disney Concert Hall, which is set to open this October as the new home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. It will be one of the defining monuments of the 74-year- old architect's career. "'Wow! Did I do that? Holy shit! Did I do that?' Sometimes you look at it that way," Gehry says, taking in the flowing ribbons of steel at street lev- el and then gazing up at the luffing "main- sails" at the center of the building-forms which seem to defy engineering, and which were conceived by Gehry as squiggly lines on a piece of paper more than 16 years ago. "I haven't seen this side of it lately," he adds. "When they take all the cranes and construction shit. away, it's going to look nice." Gehry, probably the most famous archi- tect in the world right now, and arguably the most important and influential, is a modest figure in a profession known for its massive egos. He habitually dresses down: white oxford shirt, chinos; loafers, and a beige windbreaker. Short, with a shock of white, unruly hair, he often wears a be- mused grin, and his face is soft and kind. Friends and associates call him "Foggy," a play on his initials, EO.G. (the 0 is for Owen). In conversation, especially when the subject is his own work, he is plainspo- ken and given to understatement. When you are in his presence, it is very easy to forget that he has become, over the last decade, nearly as well known as Le Cor- busier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Frank Lloyd Wright-the holy fathers of design in th.e previous century. Philip Johnson, at 97 the doyen of the architec- ture world, has all but dubbed the young- er man the Sun King, proclaiming the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Gehry's 462 I v A NIT Y F A I R most renowned project (completed in 1997), "the greatest building of our time." Such heightened praise clearly spooks Gehry, for a number of reasons. Ever since the tour de force at Bilbao there has been the lingering question: What can the man who exploded the modernist box, the in- novator whose astonishing vision reached beyond the technical constraints of the 20th century, do for an encore? Did he push so far with the undulating, arching,. titanium- shingled Guggenheim Bilbao that he can push no farther? Does he need to push farther? "I feel like I am being geniused to death," Gehry tells me. On the flip side, armchair critics-and some professional ones-frequently voice the opinion that Gehry's work since Bil- bao has tended to look the same. Since Disney hall was designed before the Gug- genheim, that critique is not especially rel- evant in this case, and for anyone who has seen the dozens of project models on dis- play in Gehry's studio near the Los Ange- les airport-structures which will not be built for a few years-it is clear that he con- tinues to develop his unique language and to push technology. With Bilbao, Gehry crossed a line. The man who had made his name in the late 1970s in Southern California with what he called "cheapskate" architecture-a. promis- cuous use of corrugated metal and chain- link fencing, lots of exposed wall and ceiling studs-suddenly became a reluctant insider. Bilbao and the fame it brought helped him capture major commissions from big-money developers and highfalutin individuals such as Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, for whom Gehry designed a $240 million shrine to Jimi Hendrix and rock 'n' roll in Seattle. After years of less glamorous work on small-scale and avant-garde projects- among the most notable of them his own house, a collage of cheapskate materials and colliding planes wrapped around a 1930s Santa Monica bungalow-Gehry has found himself in the potentially suffo- cating embrace of the Establishment. One major question for him over the past several years has been how to manage a dual existence: global star architect and maverick outsider. The Guggenheim Bilbao may have been the transforma- tional building of Gehry's career, but the Walt Disney Concert Hall is probably the most meaningful. Almost un- fathomably, it is the first huge commis- sion of Gehry's to be built in Los Angeles, the city he has lived and worked in since 1947, when his family left Toronto and moved to a poor neighborhood just two miles from the site of the concert hall. The completion of the project repre- sents a particular triumph for him because, although it was launched with a $50 mil- lion gift in 1987 from Lillian B. Disney, Walt's widow, it almost didn't get built. At one point in the stop-and-go planning process, Gehry even threatened to take his name off the building, rather than see it constructed in a way that did not meet his specifications. Owing to fund-raising difficulties, cost overruns, and bureaucratic red tape, con- struction of the complex-originally set to open in 1993-was repeatedly delayed. Throughout the 1990s, the stalled venture . was seen as a career setback for Gehry, whose design for the hall beat out propos- als by Gottfried B6hm, Hans Hollein, and James Sterling, architects who then had larger world reputations. In the painful decade-long struggle to erect what will likely be the most signifi- cant public building in the city, Gehry harnessed the forces of the Los Angeles es- tablishment, effectively using his post- Bilbao star power as leverage to complete what was viewed as a radical-some said unbuildable-structure on his terms. Dis- ney hall captures the tension between the two Franks: the polished international ar- chitect of the inside (the man who pauses on our tour of the complex to take a cell- phone call from the mayor of Lisbon, a client) and the stubborn idealist, the pusher of limits and conventions, determined to have absolute control of his creative pro- cess. Disney hall is a rare hybrid for a mon- umental civic project: a shrine to the Los Angeles and Hollywood aristocracy who funded it and to Gehry's unique Southern California brand of populist iconoclasm. "A lot of gray hairs on this one," Gehry tells me the day we walk around the nearly completed building. He seems like an excit- ed kid, but also a bit weary. Disney hall has been by far the most difficult project of his career. "Very emotional. Up and down-a lot of funny people involved," he says. I ask if there was a point when he gave up on it. "Yeah, I gave up," he says wist- fully. "You know, it's hard to imagine, but when it all fell apart, everybody blamed the architect. It was hard. Because it was thought to have been too difficult, too ex- pensive. Well, it was difficult. And we knew how to build it -they didn't. And we tried to help, but we were treated at the first go- round like the little woman: 'Sweetie, we'll take care of this. We know better.' And that's what failed." "They," he says, "are a big, amorphous group of lawyers and money people and SEPTEMBER 2003 tecture over the years," Gehry tells me. "His was an architecture that was accessible to people. And it wasn't pontifical. It was about humanist ideas, and in a way we come from similar traditions. I know that most halls are using exotic cherry or Mrican zebrawood for interiors, but I went with Douglas fir, a populist wood." The amount of white-painted Sheetrock in the public areas of Disney hall is also re- freshing. A few lobby walls are made of Douglas fir (so is most of the concert-hall interior), but the unpaneled walls of the foyers, which curve, bend, and bow, have an intrinsic elegance, like white stucco build- ings in a Greek fishing village. G ehry regrets that he was unable to cre- ate a more sensational "gateway" space for the concert hall, similar to the bravura atrium just inside the entrance at Bilbao, which soars 164 feet. He had to work with a narrow perimeter area skirting the five-story "shoebox" of the concert hall. This perimeter is filled with a row of massive steel piers made of I beams. "We had a problem with what to do with the columns in a space like this, so I made them into trees," Gehry says. The stylized trees form an effective design theme for the lobby (one that Gehry used in several previous buildings, most famously his Chiat Day headquarters in Venice, California, where exterior roof supports look like hefty squared-off branches). There are seven trees in the Disney-hall lobby, paneled in Douglas fir. About 20 feet up the tree trunks are what look like stubby sawed-off boughs, in which air-conditioning vents and lights are hidden. It is impossible to tell from looking at the exterior how much natural light Gehry man- ages to get into the hall. Between the waving surfaces of the fa<;ade are large windows and skylights, some hidden, some jutting out like giant crystals. Gehry also built walkways along the building's parapets. As he conceived it, concertgoers will be able to wander around the elevations, experiencing the arching steel forms up close. Touring the exterior-climbing the building, as it were-with its curving blind alleys and panoramic views of downtown Los Angeles, is among the most dramatic encounters anyone is likely to have with a' modern work of architecture. If Alfred Hitchcock were still alive, he would use the place as the setting for a final-reel chase. When the building is filled, Gehry hopes, people will "hang out over the balconies" and look at one another. "I was trying to make a foyer where everybody would see each other-a voyeur's paradise," he says. "I think those voyeuristic tendencies we all have come into play in a nice way-watching other people watching." SEPTEMBER 2003 The exterior of Disney hall is dramatic, but the concert-hall interior almost out- does it. "I think of it as a magical barge that you step into to listen to music," says Gehry, who has used nautical imagery before. One gallery at Bilbao is called "the boat gallery," "but it's really a fish, not a boat," says Geh- ry, who has long been obsessed with the form of fish, specifically carp. He has made fish sculptures and lamps, and the metal shingles on many of his buildings look like fish scales. There is no ambiguity about the curva- ceous wooden interior of the Disney-hall auditorium. It evokes a Viking ship or a Roman vessel which might have sailed out of a Fellini dream sequence. There is a sense of flotation when you are in Gehry's music barge-as if the wooden forms which compose the bulk of the hall were some- how suspended within the large shell of the concert hall's concrete box. Gehry says the swagging sail shapes in the hall, espe- cially the ceiling, inspired him to make the outside of the building curvy as well. The spectacular pipe organ, at center stage, has a jumble of giant wooden and metal sticks protruding from it which Gehry refers to as "the French fries." On either side of the pipe organ there is seating, which places a few hundred members of the audience behind the orchestra. This is another varia- tion on the voyeuristic theme-you can watch the oboe player and the person seat- ed in D36. The rounded shapes of the hall, it so happens, worked well acoustically, meeting with the approval of Yasuhisa Toyota, the acoustician with whom Gehry also collabo- rated on the performing-arts center at Bard College, which opened this past summer. Gehry followed Toyota's suggestions and carefully "tweaked his forms," he says, to perfect the sound in the hall. The design process he and his partners use is based largely on intuition, and lends itself to playful experimentation. Usually Gehry starts by making a number of quick sketches. After a concept takes hold, he pro- duces the first of many models. The early models are very primitive-paper, push- pins, and glue seeping out from seams. "I'll move a wall on a model, look at it for two weeks, then move it again. And I wor- ry about things. I'm like a mother hen," he has said. When he designed the interior of Disney hall, his office was not yet using the com- puter to help realize his desire to put move- ment and flow into his work. Fifteen years ago, when the buildings began to push tech- nical limits, Gehry, with the assistance of Jim Glymph, a partner in the firm, incor- porated the computer into the process. The first project for which CATIA was used was a giant fish sculpture at the Hotel Artes in Barcelona, completed in 1992. Gehry re- fuses to use the computer himself. "I can't stand to look at it for more than four min- utes," he has said. He works almost exclusively in physical models of wood, paper, and cloth. Once a working model is produced, a penlike de- vice attached to CATIA scans the surface. The program can help turn any unconven- tional shape or volume into working draw- ings. It also talks to other computers-for example, at steel mills and stone quarries- and gives them exact dimensions. "The only thing that holds back or re- stricts shape is technology and money-be- cause it costs," Gehry says. "In our culture, technology has evolved so that it's cheaper to build a rectangular building. But if you figure out a way to make technology work for you, you can explore curved shapes and make them possible at competitive costs. But," he adds, "the computer is a tool, not a partner, an instrument for catch- ing the curve, not for inventing it." The process Gehry has developed keeps him exceptionally close to the creative aspect of his architecture. Unlike many ma- jor architects with busy offices, he is not cut off from the act of designing. Through- out his career he has struggled to define himself as an artist-architect, and this has required a certain amount of sacrifice. Af- ter he got a degree from the University of Southern California in 1954, he decided, he says, "I didn't want to end up building houses for rich people~" Instead he studied city planning at Harvard, but dropped out. In the 1980s he cut back his work for develop- ers and downsized his office, taking a fi- nancial hit. Again, the tension between the two Franks came into play: to compensate for the drop in income, he ended up de- signing a lot of houses for rich people. The fight between the two Franks will no doubt go unresolved for the foreseeable future, most likely because the tension cre- ated by this internal power struggle fuels his creativity. As Ada Louise Huxtable wrote in her citation for Gehry's 1989 Pritzker Prize, "If there are many facets to Gehry's work, there are also several Gehrys. There is the media Gehry as defined and promot- ed by the press. . . . The image is part of the media-chic of Venice and the seductive charms of Santa Monica. . . . And then there is the real Frank Gehry, who is all and none of this: an admirer of the quirky, the accidental and the absurd. There is a closet elitist, if elitism is equated with a fierce admiration for the great works of art, architecture and urbanism. Above all, he is an obsessive perfectionist engaged in a ceaseless and demanding investigation of ways to unite expressive form and utilitari- an function." 0 V A NIT Y F A I R I 469 architects, construction companies, county officials, city officials." They are the ones who took the color out of Gehry's hair. During the initial attempt to raise the building, the project was disastrously mis- handled by public and private administra- tors; there was also a misunderstanding of the complex design-almost a fear, on the part of the contractors and project archi- tects hired to execute Gehry's plan, of what it would take to construct an eccentric fa9ade and interior whose twisting and rip- pling forms seemed to mock gravity. (In the original plan, the outside was faced with limestone, which Gehry had used for his 1988 American Center, in Paris. It was replaced with stainless steel, largely because of budget constraints.) Gehry's office, at that time manned by 65 people, was not equipped to service such a massive project and could not produce the working draw- ings, which were done by another firm. (Since then, with the aid of a French aero- space computer program called CATIA, Gehry and his partners have mastered the process of producing the drawings for the builders of their designs.) Cost esti- mates soared, and the $50 million Dis- ney gift -thought at first to be half of the amount needed-turned out to be less than a fourth of it. By 1994 the whole project had collapsed. Flash-forward to 1997 and the opening of the Guggenheim Bilbao, which was hailed by many as the building of the cen- tury. There was a great sense of embarrass- ment about that in Los Angeles: if a medium- size, down-at-the-heels Basque city could get a landmark Frank Gehry building done- and meet the $100 million budget-why couldn't the most innovative and progressive city in the United States? (It was also not lost on the media-savvy city fathers that the $1 billion Getty Center, designed by Richard Meier and unveiled in 1997, was upstaged in the press by the much less costly Basque commission.) Aside from Gehry, no one felt this more strongly than the mayor at that time, Rich- ard Riordan. "Riordan's how it started back again, because he and 1 play hockey togeth- er," Gehry says. "And he would say to me, 'I gotta build that hall, Frank-it's just too important.' And 1 said, 'Well, I'll help you.' And one day he said, 'I've got an idea. I'm going to appoint my friend Eli Broad to run it.' And 1 said, 'Dick, don't do that to me!' He said, 'No, you'll see-it'll work.''' (Broad donated $5 million of his own money to the Disney-hall fund, and Riordan donated $5 million. Over four years, Broad raised an- other $200 million.) Gehry and Broad had a history, and not a good one. Gehry, in fact, can barely bring himself to use Broad's name in polite con- 468 I v A NIT Y F A I R versation. "He's a difficult guy," says Gehry. "We've had our differences-a lot of differ- ences-and he probably thinks I'm a diffi- cult guy." The Gehry-Broad relationship goes back to the mid-1980s, when Broad, the only child of Lithuanian immigrants, who made his fortune in the tract-home-building business and today is the chairman of the $40 bil- lion investment firm SunAmerica, hired Gehry to design his home in the Brent- wood hills. According to Broad, Gehry dragged out the design process, and Broad eventually dismissed him from the project and brought in another architect. The glass- and-steel house, which Gehry has disowned, is still referred to by Broad as his "Frank Gehry house." With Broad in charge of the committee to get Disney hall built, Gehry feared that his old nemesis would try to pull a similar ma- neuver. His fears were borne out when Broad recommended, in order to cut costs, that Gehry step aside and allow an "exec- utive architect" to finish his plans. For starters, the architects hired by Broad pro- posed covering Disney hall in stucco instead of limestone. On May 30, 1997, Gehry sub- mitted his resignation letter to Broad: "Some people have said that 75 percent of my building is better than none. That's the way you did your house, and you are satis- fied. Maybe you can do it again. My obli- gation to myself and to the Disney family makes it impossible for me to agree to such a process." Gehry then made a last-ditch appeal to Diane Disney Miller, the daughter of Walt Disney. (Lillian Disney had died at 98 in 1997.) Negotiations ensued. At first Miller took Broad's side, but then she flipped and came out for Gehry. In 1997, she saved the day by directing $14 million of Disney- family funds to pay for Gehry's office to do the working drawings. "We promised Los Angeles a Frank Gehry building, and that's what we intend to deliver," Miller told The New York Times. "I would feel ashamed and embarrassed to shortchange the city." 'T his is the grand staircase that the di- vas of Los Angeles will ascend in their finery. But most people will just go up the escalator," Gehry says, walking through the lobby off the main entrance to the concert hall. The stairs are carpeted in a loud red-and-green floral pattern, de- signed by Gehry as a tribute to Lillian Dis- ney, who loved gardens. "I promised her a garden here, and that's what 1 have giv- en her. In the concert hall, the seats are the same pattern, and 1 put a garden on the roof, where there will be a fountain we designed for her memory made of broken delftware, which she collected," he adds. The staircase is stark and handsome, with a dramatic curve; it is made of simple dry- wall painted white. The more proletarian-and more central- escalators seem to be of greater interest to him. "Let me show you, over here, how the escalators lead up from the netherworld, the parking garage underneath, and bring you right up into the lobby. I did that on pur- pose, because I wanted people to be forced into the lobby, to become acquainted with the concert hall. That was the problem with the Music Center-you could never get from your car into the theater." Disney hall is, in many ways, an attempt to right the wrongs of the Los Angeles Mu- sic Center, situated directly across the street. Until now, the 60s-era complex has been the foreboding symbol of the performing arts for the movie capital of the world. "I didn't want a temple," Gehry says, pointing toward the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, which looks like a cross between the Parthenon and a medical-office build- ing. The Chandler, like most modern con- cert halls in the United States, was built at a time when classical modern-think Lin- coln Center-was in the air. , Concert halls in the U.S. have this kind of daunting quality about them," says Esa-Pekka Salonen, music director of the L.A. Philharmonic, who was a close adviser to Gehry. "They were built in the late 60s and 70s, and they are usually on an elevation, raised above the street, and you see these pillars. That is exactly what this building is not about. What message should a concert hall send out? It should be a message of invitation, openness, rather than this shrine of high arts, where you go to worship. This place is going to be open at street level, and it will function in such a way that people can just hang out. You buy the ticket, and that's it. It's just a normal part of life." On Disney hall's east side, which faces the Music Center, polite homage is paid to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Gehry has aligned one of the high curving steel walls of the new building with the east wall of the Chandler, arranging it so that the the- aters engage each other with a friendly wave across First Street. With the Grand Avenue side of the building, the fa9ade most peo- ple will either walk or drive by, Gehry at- tempts to reach out to passersby and con- certgoers with a lobby that opens onto the street, thanks to five glass-paneled garage doors, which, when retracted, reveal the box office, a cafe, and a gift shop. Gehry buildings grab you with their unique, chaotic vocabulary; they pull you in with a kind of airy, casual charm. The materials he chooses are usually simple and inexpensive-Bilbao's titanium being an ex- ception. "Alvar Aalto was my hero in archi- SEPTEMBER 2003