My Parrot has lousy diction: a blog by Jess Zimbabwe

It was clear that Frank Gehry is self-aware from the introductory biographic notes that Pritzker read: “Frank Gehry has been the subject of a Simpsons episode…” was how it began. Gehry is often dismissed as the worst offender among “starchitects” seeking iconic memorials to their own talents, ala Howard Roark.

Gehry and Pritzker

And maybe it’s that his advanced age has offered him some more perspective (Gehry is 80), but this interview made it clear that his well-known style was mostly accidental. Here are my observations from watching the session:

1. He came from very humble beginnings.

Gehry was driving a truck  at age 19 or 20, and taking some college classes as night. In one pottery class, he became friendly with the instructor, who invited Gehry to visit his home while it was under construction. Gehry was taken with the design and construction process he observed, so the professor recommended an architecture course, which the professor then paid for when Gehry couldn’t afford it.

2. Disney’s lawyers treated him pretty shabbily.

When Gehry was announced as being on the short list for the Disney Concert Hall, the family’s attorneys called a meeting with him too provide him with a list of things that he couldn’t do in the project. The meeting ended with the lead attorney declaring that he “would never let them put the Disney family name on something he designed.” (In the end, Gehry chose brass railings throughout the widely-acclaimed project because they had been on the attorney’s early list of forbidden things.)

3. He was mostly pre-occupied with the interior acoustic functions in designing Disney Concert Hall.

When Pritzker asked Gehry about this project, he went on at lengths about how symphony members need to hear each other in order to develop as performers, reverberation periods, and how studies show that audiences prefer wood interiors for music on strictly psychological bases (they associate it with string instruments). Basically, he talked about everything except the widely discussed exterior form and materials. “Forget the exterior!” he exclaimed, when Pritzker pressed. After a while, Gehry eventually relented and admitted that he wanted Disney to be clad in stone because it was warmer, but after the Guggenheim Bilbao opened, “everyone” (I assume the client) wanted the same titanium finish in L.A.

4. The “fish” forms started as a bit of a joke.

In his early career, Gehry sought ways to incorporate passion into a building without relying on the “19^th century model of decoration.” When post-modernism rose to prominence in the field, he started a series of sketches to make fun of his colleagues who had regressed into Greek and Roman decorative models; “why stop there? Why not go back earlier to a fish?” he thought. As he started sketching these fish shapes, he realized they had a certain structural integrity and begun experiementing with getting that form into a building.

5. He’s not a huge fan of the AIA.

Gehry believes that in order to drive innovation in design and construction, the architect needs to take on more responsibility rather than less. That includes taking on more risk. “The culture of the AIA creates an overprotected world for architects” through their defensive model contract documents.

6. Fred Kent doesn’t know how to ask a question.

Fred Kent, President of Project for Public Spaces, asked one of the first audience questions. But instead of actually asking  much of a question, he went into lengthy exposition about the work of PPS and described how they are always fixing mistakes of professional architects. I have great sympathies for Kent’s ideals, but the organization is noted for not adding constructively to the dialogue on public spaces, and Kent’s “question” here followed suit. If Kent had asked about a particular Gehry project with less than ideal urban design (say Disney Concert Hall, which offers pretty crappy street faces to now-lovely downtown L.A.), I would have been really interested to hear Gehry’s response. Instead, Gehry finally cut Kent off and asked if he was asking about any particular project and Kent stammered out a generic question like, “why do you still not focus on creating quality public spaces around your projects?” And Gehry literally waved his hand at him and said, “you’re a very pompous guy” and took the next question. I think only old people can get away with that, but the audience did applaud.

7. Cameron Sinclair was a better question asker.

Sinclair’s question immediately followed Kent’s, and he asked Gehry to clarify some remarks that he’d recently made in an April NPR program about relevance in architecture. (You can listen to the original remarks here.) Gehry clarified that he didn’t believe that buildings needed to be iconic to be considered “architecture.” I think Cameron thought he was posing a tough “gotcha” question to Gehry, but it actually came out pretty nicely in Gehry’s response. (Sinclair is the Co-Founder and President of Architecture for Humanity.)

Update (in reference to #6, above):

James Fallows had a different take on the events of the Kent/Gehry exchange.