On Gehry, the Nature of the Artist, and Inspiration

So I'm watching a doumentary on Frank Gehry the famous architecht who I had only barely heard of and only then because he's redesigning the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. I was aware of some of his surreal architecture but had never thought about it much.

So anyway, his psychiatrist is being interviewed (Ha! I'm sure Gehry loved that!). I'm working from memory so it won't be perfectly word for word here but he says something along the lines of:

"People come to me and they say oh I have this problem in my marriage, how do I handle this stress at work, how do I fix my life, my kids and so forth. When an artist comes to me he wants to know how to change the world."

Hearing that startled me because it hit home so directly. I've been mentally chewing on it ever since.

So in honour of Mr. Gehry here are some pictures of his architecture. I mean this stuff shouldn't even stand up let alone ever have been made. Why am I posting this? Good question. There's something about these buildings that inspires me. Gehry referred to them as the chaos of Democracy. I can't really put my finer on it but that's the point. It's about not walking the beaten path, about insisting in doing it your way, about making something be more than what it was thought that it could be, and probably about pissing people off who would say "No good. Building line must be straight. Bad Building. Baaad Building." And because I want one.

On with the show! Gehry seems very inspired by sails. This building in Manhattan was specfically designed to look like sails as inspired by a brief conversation he had with Barry Diller who owns IAC/InterActiveCorp which in turn owns Ticketmaster, the television shopping network HSN, online dating service Match.com and search engine Ask Jeeves. It's hard to tell from the picture below but all the walls are actually glass.

The IAC Building - Manhattan

If you look at the front of the Disney (below) building it looks like two sails. In the documentary he said he designed it that way specifically based on the shape and form of the two sails (fore and aft I suppose?) when their both filled with air. Unfortunately I have no nautical vocabulary to describe this.

The Disney Building - California

Think of standing between the two and facing to the right of the photo and you can see that they really do look like sails.

The Dancing House - Prague

I love this building. It's so bizarre. There's a triangle piece in the tower on the left that looks likea pin and it looks like it's deflated the tower on the left. I assume it was done on purpose.

MIT Stata Complex

This is only 1 angle but I love it! I want to live in this building. Or work in it. It is so wickedly cool. Unfortunately I think that MIT requires some sort of math skill to get in.

Guggenheim Musem - Spain - Two Different Angles

The first anglemakes seems to fall under that sail theme again and the second seems to imply a boat. Love it!

The Seattle Music Experience Building

First the above view of the whole complex. It looks like a heart to me. That's what I thought. Apparently it's inspired by the image of a shattered Fender Stratocaster. Uh ok...not seeing it. Doesn't matter. It's still cool.

The Seattle Music Experience Building

Below are two angles of the Music Experience Building. It's an incredible place. See more photo's and read about it at: http://www.arcspace.com/architects/gehry/emp_n/index.htm
I just love the way light plays off the angles. When the light hits it it becomes, in Gehry's words, a living thing.

The Art Gallery of Ontario

I believe this will be completed in 2008. I see a sail motif again. The only problem with this is that it's interesting but not daring. This makes it a perfect fit for Toronto. (oh snap!) I can say that. I'm grew up there and I'm leaving for a reason. (snap! snap!)

And thus ends our mildly informative and hopefully somewhat inspirational tour of Gehry.