Structure is at times over-emphasised in architecture. It is not just what is seen and what can be touched that is important in a building but what flows inside it..what can be felt. Frank Gehry, arguably the most famous architect in the world today is a master orchestrator of subliminal experience. Of creating buildings that come across as living beings. Vibrating with energy, and individuality. No wonder then that most of his buildings are tourist magnets because they represent a language, the world has not learnt to speak yet. A language that is futuristic and yet rooted in the present and the past. That is free flowing and yet functional. And deconstructed in a way that defies form or the way we understand it and yet somehow is magically harmonious.
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Whether it is the Walt Disney concert hall that unfolds like a silver origami poem or the surreal Czech Dancing House or the City of Wine Complex, 8 Spruce Street in New York City, Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis, Northern Spain, Experience Music Project in Seattle, the titanium layered Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Der Neue Zollhof in Düsseldorf or the Marqués de Riscal Vineyard Hotel in Elciego, his structures do not belong anywhere and yet everywhere.
Frank Owen Gehry, was born on February 28, 1929 in Toronto. His story shows just how important a child’s formative influences are in shaping his destiny. He was noticed for his creativity at a very young age and his resourceful grand-mother would help him build imaginary worlds, cities, homes from scraps of hardware waste and wood. These creations would one day lead to some of the most famous landmarks in the world. He learnt here the relevance of using everyday, ordinary things like steel, chain links, unvarnished wood to create extraordinary structures. From his parents he inherited a love for drawing and in his buildings, you can see both an inspired architect and an abstract artist.
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His beginnings were however humble. He began his working life as a truck driver. On the crossroads where nothing seemed to be leading anywhere, he remembered his love for buildings and started taking architecture classes.He eventually graduated from the University of Southern California’s School of Architecture as a topper. He also studied city planning at the Harvard Graduate School but rather unsuccessfully because he wanted to build conscientiously and with a social purpose and not just for profit.
Gehry has been famously called “the most important architect of our age” and like all great stories of success, his began with a self-fulfilling prophecy. Every artist creates something in his likeness and sometimes it is so extraordinary that the world is forced to take notice. And so Gehry created a home for himself in Santa Monica that instantly got him international recognition. The house encapsulated everything that Gehry wanted to be known for. He bought it as a 1920’s old-fashioned home and spun it around as a cutting edge structure with a facade wrapped in a metal sheath. He retained some distinctive old features but gave the house a modern face that disturbed the staid neighbourhood but also won grudging admiration.
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The house proclaimed what Gehry would later become famous for…Deconstructivism. An idea that simply means that a building does not have to reveal how it functions to the world. It can appear to be one thing and be another. It can belong to many time zones, multiple contexts, be open to any kind of interpretation and be free from any imposed ideals of what a building can and should look like. This redesigned Gehry home blended the features of the 20s architecture with a sci-fi fantasy like swagger that defied time and geography. Gehry is like a rebel musician who can remix any genre without fear and create a new wave. He has given corrugated steel a starring role in modern architecture but he is also an aesthete who knows the history of art well. Such has been his impact on modern sensibilities that an acclaimed film-maker like Sydney Pollack made a documentary about him. It was called Sketches of Frank Gehry and was made over five years as the cameras studied and documented Gehry’s creative life. He says it best, “Your best work is your expression of yourself. You may not be the greatest at it but when you do it, you are the only expert.”
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Reema Moudgil has been writing for magazines and newspapers on art, cinema, issues, architecture and more since 1994, is a mother, an RJ , an artist. She runs Unboxed Writers from a rickety computer , edited Chicken Soup for The Indian Woman’s soul, authored Perfect Eight and earns a lot of joy through her various roles and hopes that some day working for passion will pay in more ways than just one. And that one day she will finally be able to build a dream house, travel around the world and look back and say, “It was all worth it.”