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July 10, 2008
Of Bard, and The Bard
Culturist [WNYC blog]
by Claudia La Rocco
This feeling was reinforced by the setting, Frank Gehry’s Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. Gehry, though Canadian born, has been based in Los Angeles for decades, and his extravagant buildings have always seemed, to me, to represent a particularly American vision of the world - one that, depending on my frame of mind, can come off as wonderfully hopeful and expansive, or terribly wasteful and vulgar:
This was my first trip to Bard, and I was expecting to find the Gehry building utterly out of place on the gorgeous, verdant campus, like a gaudy spaceship that has crumpled to earth in a remote forest. But this one, unlike many Gehry buildings, won me over, prompting the first nice thoughts I’ve had about the architect since he clambered into bed with the Brooklyn developer Bruce Ratner. The photo doesn’t really do justice to the odd delicacy of the building’s shimmery skin, which reflected the changing light as day shifted into night. The image, instead of alien machines, was of an alien itself, pulsing with strange life against a backdrop of plush evergreens.
NoLandGrab: "Verdant campus?" You mean, like this?
Posted by eric at July 10, 2008 3:22 PM