What's the design theme and philosophy of Frank Gehry?

Question

What's the design theme and philosophy of Frank Gehry?

Answer 1

Frank arrived on the scene in the early eighties with a small, very local firm. The first time I met him was at a lecture he gave at Cal Poly Pomona in 1985. I was a student at the time.

He's such a great guy, and he's very passionate about architecture. At that time, the term "deconstruction didn't exist yet for an "ism" in architecture. He'd describe himself as a post modernist.

See, he was looking for alternatives to what was being done in the traditional sense, but at that time a lot of other guys were too. So, since there was no one unifying "style" to group the rebels into, they were all just classified as post modernist. Their manifesto was "Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture" by Robert Venturi.

That book basically justified why they didn't have to follow the historical and / or modernist rules if they didn't want to. As the years have progressed, the various different niches have begun to be identified.

Frank got even more eccentric than he was in the eightees as the restrictions on creativity loosened. His style now is based on the aproach that you can build a building without having to rely on the appearance of traditional structural forms. In this aproach, you see, he's subtracted a crucial element from the understanding of what architecture is all about.

Then, when you look at his buildings, you see that he's not reinserted anything else in its place! The buildings look like they're "structure free" and proud of it - despite the fact that they lack a crucial aspect in our traditional understanding of what architecture is.

This is one way of achieving what Derrida helped define as deconstruction. I guess Gehry would probably classify himself that way now...but what came first? The chicken or the egg?

Answer 2

Frank Gehry Design Philosophy

Answer 3

It would be made of recycled yarn and have many sharp edges. Of course, I don't think he'd win approval from the Colorado Springs zoning board. Possibly....they are highly "enlightened".

Answer 4

Deconstructivism.