Steel skin can hide volumes about an architect’s structure

spencer — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 05:09:34 +0000

Frank O. Gehry, there is no other practicing architect who has as much name recognition amongst laymen and who can cause such distress amongst architects. With his two recent projects (the Princeton Lewis Science Library and an addition to the Art Gallery of Ontario) open to the public there has been much talk about the stylistic dichotomy between them. Phillip Kennicott, in an article examining Gehry’s body of work, wrote in this past Sunday’s Washington Post: as observers attempt to sum up his career and project his legacy, there is a growing sense that his most acclaimed work, buildings made in the style of Bilbao, have turned out to be dead ends. Rather than open up new possibilities for the architect, they seem to have left him in a rut. And as his most recent projects suggest, Gehry’s best work today may be his least “Gehryesque.” Yet, I have to wonder if the critique’s that have been written about these two buildings and their relationship to his work as a whole have missed the forest through the trees. The problem with analyzing Gehry’s work is that too often critics fall into the trap of comparing his buildings as individual works [...]

Post from: selophane.blog

Steel skin can hide volumes about an architect’s structure

Architect as artist

spencer — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 01:35:33 +0000

In the past century we have seen the rise of polytechnic architecture, a method of building which divorces the architect from the world of art and creativity, and instead treats buildings as solutions to engineering problems and casts architects in the role of project managers, facade coordinators and space planners.Â Working and living within this modern paradigm it can be easy to forget that our profession is not just about ensuring the health, safety and welfare as our licenses require, but also about creating spaces that inspire and capture the imagination. The New York Times has an interesting article describing a new exhibit of sketches by Frank Gehry at the Princeton University Art Museum which help to remind us that architecture is more than creating big boxes for commercial and residential means. While I am not a huge fan of Gehry, and feel that he is more popular for the “cool” factor of his buildings than for the real reason he should be popular – that if you consider the sum total of his works as one examination in form, it is a very interesting exercise in mass and volume and the delamination of these masses and volumes, I am [...]

Post from: selophane.blog

Architect as artist

selophane.blog » Frank Gehry

Steel skin can hide volumes about an architect’s structure

Architect as artist