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January 21, 2008
"Nice building. Then what?" Frank Gehry on TED.com
TED.com
Interview with Frank Gehry, February, 2002
Frank Gehry wanted to be a scientist when he grew up. But after blowing up a part of his house, at age 14, he decided against it. He's gone on to create some mindblowing buildings, including the Guggenheim at Bilbao and LA's Walt Disney Concert Hall. This wildly entertaining conversation with Richard Saul Wurman (then host of TED) touches on many topics, including the power of failure, the importance of collaboration, and the need for architects to bring personal expression to the table. (Recorded February 2002 in Monterey, California. Duration: 22:00.)
Double-takes:
"When I came out of college, I started to try to do things contextually... and I tried to understand that language as a beginning as a place to jump off. There was so much of it being done by spec builders, it was trivialized so much, that I just stopped.... It didn't feel good to me."
"The issue of city building in democracy is interesting because it creates chaos. Everybody doing their things creates a very chaotic environment. If you can figure out how to work off each other, if you can get a bunch of people who respect each other's work and play off each other, you might be able to create models for how to build sections of the city without resorting to the one-architect (like the Rockefeller Center, model) model, which is kinda from another era."
[...or Atlantic Yards, which makes you wonder if Gehry gets much sleep these days.]
"Bilbao did not leak — I was so proud. The MIT project... sent the facilities people to Bilbao... they were there for three days and it rained everyday. They kept walking around, I noticed they were looking under things... they wanted to know where the buckets were hidden. I was clean, there wasn't a bloody leak in the place — it was fantastic. Well, up until every building leaked."
[Uh, oh...]
Posted by lumi at January 21, 2008 4:52 AM