$1,000+ for Ugly, No Wonder the Shipping is Free

[Michael Peet]

I see a future of gray, unlovely, featureless downtown federal building structures, with rows of windows shiny as the silver dollars on a dead man's eyelids, corporate sculpture out front, filled with ikea-style cookie cutter band sawed furniture, the two-dimensional people going in and out being as conformist and imaginative as ants.

I really like this sentence - vivid imagery.

Mike

[george wilson]

Silver dollars!!! I thought it was pennies. Must be inflation.

[Rob Fisher]

It's hard to appreciate Frank Gerhy's work. His "Deconstructivism" is cartoonish at best. My father, who was a noted furniture designer, called guys like him architectural decorators. If you want to see his crappiest work to date, while not outlandish - it's merely as exciting as a bucket of slop, look at what he's designed for the Eisenhower Memorial in DC.

if you couldn't tell, I'm not a Gehry fan. There are many modernists I appreciate. He's not one of them.

Well I certainly had no intention of starting a trash fest on Gehry. And I am definitely not the biggest fan or Gehry's work, furniture or architecture, but I do think he has something to offer. I don't like many of his buildings and he can absolutely be seen as an "architectural decorator" at times, and that's not a good thing in my opinion. What he does have to offer is a different view, even if it is simplified to say that his buildings simply look different. They are not the typical glass boxes that are seemingly everywhere, city to suburb (this is what I think Jonathan was eluding too). I think there is much more to his buildings, but the simple fact that they look different means they act differently on the person and the city and they cause us to at least discuss them, something many other buildings fail to do out of simple boredom.

Regarding Gehry's furniture, his first production furniture, easy edges, was probably his most successful IMO. The simple material (corrugated cardboard) and fun lines intrigue me. In the end it was more costly than he wanted and he was becoming more famous for his furniture than his architecture, not something he could live with. I also happen to like his roto molded polymer furniture, but it is admittedly rather funky.

[Van Huskey]

I for one appreciate a lot of the designs of the mid-century modern designers. My wife really wants a set of Eames lounge chairs and ottamans and I plan to buy them at some point for her (us) for a special occasion. One redeeming quality is they hold their value very well if cared for, even the current production items. They are made in the US by Herman Miller with a high degree of care. Sure >10K for a pair of chairs is in many respects insane but they will be well used for many years and are quite comfortable to boot. But then again the price of a highend handplane or an Italian bandsaw probably seem insane to just as many people.

Gehry's buildings always move me, sometimes for better sometimes for worse. However, even the ones that I am not a fan of I prefer over the total lack of imagination in 99% of buildings built today.

[Maurice Ungaro]

Rob,
I agree that Gerhy's buildings offer alternative views to architecture, as did those of the Greene brothers, Wright, Pei, etc. one of the true tests of architecture is wether or not the structure functions as intended, and wether or not it contributes to the sense of place. Unfortunately, too many of Gehry's buildings are fraught with mechanical failure (reference lawsuits against the architect), and detract from the sense of place in favor of the "look at me" approach.

[Rob Fisher]

Rob,
I agree that Gerhy's buildings offer alternative views to architecture, as did those of the Greene brothers, Wright, Pei, etc. one of the true tests of architecture is wether or not the structure functions as intended, and wether or not it contributes to the sense of place. Unfortunately, too many of Gehry's buildings are fraught with mechanical failure (reference lawsuits against the architect), and detract from the sense of place in favor of the "look at me" approach.

I generally agree on your views about function and sense of place. And that is why Gehry is not nearly my favorite architect. Regarding building failure, it is unacceptable IMO to have problems on the scale that Gehry has. To his defense though he is pushing the envelope and it is unclear to me how much of the failure can be attributed to Gehry and how much to the contractor (and or value engineering by the client). On the Strata Center (MIT) Gehry only got a 5% design fee, which is rather small, especially considering the complicated nature of the building. Others you mention, Wright and Pei, notably, had building failures. I think when you are doing things that haven't been done before you will have problems. Failures are still something I try to avoid at most any cost.

[Joel Goodman]

About "building failure" ie leaks etc. -- in these matters it is common to sue everyone as it's often unclear at the start who (or who's insurance company) you can get payment from. So the architect will be sued, along with the engineering firm, general contractor, roofing contractor, maker of the roofing material, and so forth. I wouldn't hold Gehry responsible for that... And I'm not really a fan of his designs! My dad was an architect and I remember a case where there was a lawsuit about a leaking roof -- a modernist building but the same roof detail has been used 3X without issue by my dad previously. It turned out that the company making the roofing material (one of the biggest) had totally changed the formulation and neglected to tell anyone or change the product #s. Essentially they had discontinued a product and substituted a different one (which behaved differently) without any notice.