July, 2001
In this issue: Frank O. Gehry: Thinking out of the box
Driving forces of Innovation
Frank O. Gehry: Thinking out of the box
I am not fond of ‘out of the box thinking’ as metaphor for creativity — 1) because it is overused, and 2) it has a somewhat dispara
ging overtone. Nevertheless it is an apt description of Frank O. Gehry’s breakthrough creativity.
According to the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Canadian born Frank Owen Gehry "is one of the most inventive and pioneering architects working today. Based in Los Angeles, he has developed a unique vocabulary that reflects both the urban vernacular and his long association with contemporary artists."
I have been a fan of Gehry’s work ever since I saw his design of the Guggenheim Museum at Bilbao. At Bilbao, Gehry expanded on Frank Lloyd Wright’s lead at the Guggenheim in New York, and broke through the template of boxy modernism, creating a building of breathtaking sculptural splendor.
<http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ingles/edificio/el_edificio.htm>
Gehry describes his breakthrough this way:
"I used to be a symmetrical freak and a grid freak. I used to follow grids and then I stated to think and I realized that these were chains, that Frank Lloyd Wright was chained to the 30-60 grid, and there was no freedom in it for him, and that the grids were an obsession and a crutch. You don't need that if you can create spaces and forms and shapes. That's what artists do, and they don't have grids and crutches, they just do it.There were gestures in my sketches. How do you get them built? I was able to build them with the computer, with material I would never have tried before. You'll see the relationship to my sketches in Bilbao. This is the first time I've gotten it. And once you taste blood, you're not going to give up. I don't know where to go. How wiggly can you get and still make a building?"
Born in Toronto in 1929, Gehry grew up playing in his uncle’s hardware store. Chain-link, pipes and hardware fixtures later became part of his design vocabulary in his early years as an architect. The family moved to Los Angeles when he was a teenager and Gehry graduated from the school of architecture at the University of Southern California in 1954.
For 20 years Gehry was snubbed by the architectural community;
I think of myself as an outsider. You know how you take those poses and you live your life with those things. So I felt at home with the artists and I learned a lot from them. I did some work for some of them. Like I ended up doing the Ron Davis studio. But I was intellectually intrigued with their process, their language, their attitudes, their ability to make things with their own hands. That it wasn't this detached thing. That it was hands-on and it was—there were a lot of things that felt more comfortable to me that way from the art world, and I became more and more detached from architecture, from the architecture world. I was doing architecture. And more and more the architects were treating me like Joe Idiot anyway.
Very few people were very interested at the beginning…I was trained early in my career by a Viennese master to make perfection, but in my first projects, I was not able to find the craft to achieve that perfection. My artist friends, people like Jasper Johns, Bob Rauschenberg, Ed Kienholz, Claes Oldenburg, were working with very inexpensive materials — broken wood and paper, and they were making beauty. These were not superficial details, they were direct, it raised the question of what was beautiful. I chose to use the craft available, and to work with the craftsmen and make a virtue out of their limitations.Painting had an immediacy which I craved for architecture.
I explored the processes of raw construction materials to try giving feeling and spirit to form. In trying to find the essence of my own expression, I fantasized the artist standing before the white canvas deciding what was the first move. I called it the moment of truth.Who are his favorite artists? "Rothko. And Jasper Johns. Of the modern, I mean I look at everybody. Matisse. Picasso. Everybody. I look at—I have always loved stuff that I find in museums and I would get excited. Well, my theory is that our buildings, the ideas that come from buildings are from art. So when we were working in Mexico on a project, I was thinking of ‘The Madonna and Child.’ So, paintings and sculptures have been very crucial to my world and my life—probably more than literature. Although I like reading.
As for architects, he thinks Le Corbusier was the greatest architect of the 20th century.In 1978 Gehry finally gained recognition for his work after renovations to his own home created a stir.
He enclosed the first floor in a corrugated metal sheath that looks from the street like a jagged privacy fence, then expanded the ground floor space out to meet it. He punched miscellaneous windows out of the new wall, and giant shards of glass appear to have collided into the building to form window/skylights with the tilted wood-frame supports left exposed.Concrete blocks retain a small, terraced yard. Concrete steps, a plywood stoop and spare patches of chain-link and white picket fencing all provide accents. Meanwhile, the demure pink second floor with its pristine white trim, brick chimney and black tar paper gambrel roof peeks out above the whole assemblage. (Salon.com 1999)
The fame of his house led to high profile commissions, and a record setting number of prizes. In 1989 he won the Pritzker Prize a life-time achievement award considered "the Nobel prize" for architecture.
What are the driving forces of innovation at Frank O. Gehry & Associates?
1. Having a stable environment: Gehry built a firm in which everyone got paid on time and that didn’t borrow money— this wasn’t considered chic by the architectural community.Strong financial management by Gehry’s wife offers stability within the company, and Gehry finds this comforting; stability is also an important factor when it comes to attracting talented young architects. Gehry observes, "When you're starting out, you can't get a team because you look so crazy, and you do work over and over again when you're younger, when you're fussing around trying to figure out who you are. And so people that have kids and stuff like that don't stay with you because you seem too unstable."Gehry leaves the office at 6pm and never works on weekends.
2. Collaboration: Gehry in his quest to push the boundaries of architecture as an art form says, "We are finding ways of working together, artists and architects, architects and architects, clients and architects. The dream is that each brick, each window, each wall, each road, each tree will be placed lovingly by craftsmen, client, architect, and people to create beautiful cities. Adding the extra time and the money at the beginning is essential."
3. Partnering with technology: "The new computer and management systems allow us to unite all the players--the contractor, the engineer, the architect--with one modeling system," says Gehry. "It's the 'master builder' principle. I think it makes the architect more the parent and the contractor more the child--the reverse of the 20th-century system. It's interesting because you wouldn't think that would happen with something as technical as the computer, but in fact it has. And you wouldn't think an office like ours would lead it."
Gehry relies on the technical wizardry of his colleagues to translate his scribbly drawings into structurally sound designs. His building don’t leak. They rely on Catia, a design and engineering software program (also used by Boeing and Chrysler) to seamlessly conceive designs and implement them. Once a Catia model is generated, models made of styrofoam, cardboard or metal are built. Gehry could spend days or weeks pondering them and creating new iterations for Catia to process. The software has programmed constraints, to ensure designs are structurally sound.
For Gehry, this process is a balancing act between design and engineering and cost."We know cost-wise that we can only afford "X" as a certain amount. So then we modify the designs. We use that as a way to understand the cost. And we get area counts, surface counts an accuracy of seven decimal points. So it is really clean. Very clear and very precise and so when—if you're here you would see that there are days when there is too much of something and they calculate it and they come in with long faces. I say, God, the design looks good but you've got to take ten percent of this away. And it is a matter of refining and keeping going until we get it right. And then refining the shapes."
His team of 120 employees is made up of young talent that gathers in small groups to scrutinize the small models Gehry uses to study every project. The office is experimenting at the intersection of computer technology and design.
4. Freedom to Play. Technical and financial comfort give Gehry the freedom to play. This is the essential ingredient that characterizes his architecture.
5. Listening. When asked to describe his creative process, Gehry says, "I listen to the client a lot. A lot. I spend a lot more time with clients than people could guess. Because I think that is the way we move forward and they get what they want and they feel comfortable about it. It is a process that lets them know you're listening to what their problems are. But it also is a process that creates the opportunities for invention, because it is that interaction that makes it exciting and rich. And I love the process most of all, the people process—better than the final building actually."
Sources:Salon.com
Architectural Record http://www.archrecord.com/INTRVIEW/GHERY.ASP
"Nice Building, But The Real Innovation Is in the Process." Fortune Magazine 07/10/2000
Gehry Talks, by Mildred Friedman
The Pritzker Architecture Prize
Happy Creating,
Linda Naiman
