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May 21, 2010
The Bilbao Effect: a theatrical satire, with a starchitect, a megadevelopment, and some AY echoes
Atlantic Yards Report
No, The Bilbao Effect, Oren Safdie's highly entertaining satirical play, isn't about Frank Gehry, even though the title takes off from the well-known phenomenon of enlisting a starchitect to create a signature civic building, like Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.
After all, the protagonist is arrogant Swiss starchitect Erhardt Shlaminger, a man convinced of his own genius, while Gehry can get self-deprecating and defensive.
Nor is it about Atlantic Yards, though it is clearly inspired, in part, by the project. After all, the official blurb that states it "tackles controversial urban design issues that New Yorkers have recently encountered in Brooklyn as a result of the hotly-debated plans to redevelop the Atlantic Yards [sic] into an architecture-star mega-development."
Architecture on trial
The play, staged appropriately at the Center for Architecture in Greenwich Village, takes the form of a mock trial of Shlaminger, held by the American Institute for Architects (and subject to the unreliable judge's caprice).
Why? His project--well, the architectural imperfections that reflect extreme heat (read Gehry's Disney Hall) and falling ice (read Daniel Libeskind's addition to the Royal Ontario Museum)--is supposed to have caused a woman's suicide.
NoLandGrab: Let's not forget Mr. Gehry's own avalanche problem.
Posted by eric at May 21, 2010 11:47 AM