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May 12, 2009
Can Gehry’s reputation survive Atlantic Yards?
A developer’s rejection of Frank Gehry’s design for a landmark Brooklyn stadium could be the final nail in the coffin of his ‘starchitect’ reputation
The First Post
by Charles Laurence
This critique of the legend of Frank Gehry from Britain's The Week contains a couple inaccuracies about the starchitect's stalled Brooklyn megaproject.
Has Frank Gehry been fooling us all along? First came the leaks and cracks in one of his buildings that led to lawsuits in Boston, and now comes a biography that reveals the 'starchitect's' other-worldly, arty persona to be a self-conscious front.
Since his triumph with the Bilbao Guggenheim Museum, Gehry's swooping, anarchic forms, defying straight lines and conventional balance, have made him perhaps the most popular contemporary architect. At 80, Gehry appears to be at the top of his game. He is better known than any of his rivals; his buildings give pleasure to people who know nothing of architectural niceties.
But there are doubts. Gehry designs are deemed high maintenance, and people question whether they will endure. Is he capable of doing more than his signature swoops without getting silly, or simply dull?
The $4.2bn Atlantic Yards project in New York's Brooklyn - a sports arena surrounded by office towers and apartment blocks on reclaimed industrial wasteland - should be the Rockefeller Centre of our times and his crowning glory. Instead it has been stalled by local opposition, unrealistic costs, and complaints that the apartment blocks are stodgy, conventional and lazy. Gehry is at the centre of controversy again.
Hey, that "reclaimed industrial wasteland" was actually the rapidly redeveloping home to several hundred people, pre-Ratner.
Perhaps the greater blow to Gehry's triumph lies in the Atlantic Yards of Brooklyn. While the critics condemned the uninspired outer buildings, no one doubted that his sports stadium and signature office tower were Gehry beauties. But there was no thought for budget, and even before the Wall Street meltdown the developer had abandoned the Gehry stadium for a cheaper, conventional design from another architect.
NoLandGrab: "No one doubted?" If by "no one," Laurence means "Herbert Muschamp and Nicolai Ourousoff," the The New York Times's architecture critics, then that's right. But as far as Ratner having "abandoned" Gehry's arena design, that's all still speculation, since Ratner and the ESDC are mum, and as of last night, Gehry said, sort of, that he's still the man.
Posted by eric at May 12, 2009 11:17 AM