Esquisses de Frank Gehry (1)

Documentary (2000-2005)
Director: Sydney Pollack

26 Sept 06 16h36
UGC CITE LES HALLS


How do you feel when you look at the real buildings?
- Terrible! How could anyone allow me to do such a terrible thing. I want a place to cover up myself.
- From sketching to finishing, it takes such a long years to do a project. Too long, that when it's finished, i started to hate it.
- This building is one of my children, and this is the second time I see it. Maybe I would see it two or three times more in life, then, that's all...

How do architects work?
- From sketches, then paper models, then cardboard models, then digital models, then wooden models, then concrete buildings, then demolished....

Where do the inspirations come from?
- From wastepaper bin, from paintings, from a clip, from a fish....

Why you are so obessed with Fish?
- When human civilization can't advance, you have either to stop or to go back. And I choose to go back to millions of years ago when there is only fish!
- The day after seeing the fish sculpture model, the client called me, "Frank, we got a problem. You know, our clients pay thousand dollars to stay a night in the hotel, and we put them to look at the ass of the fish?!"

What is architecture?
- This is a concert hall, the auditorium is the most important, the others, are of minor importance.
- If the architectural presence distracts the spectators' attention, it's only that the paintings are not good enough.

Born in 1929 in Toronto, Frank Gehry was once a lorry driver, an airplane cleaner before he became known as Frank O. Gehry - the great architect. Graduated from Southern California University at the age of 25, he established his associate in 1963, at the age of 34. His artisitic view, however, was not gaining recognition from his contemporary at his young age. And he concluded that there was a anti-semitic sentiment against him, so he changed his name from Ephraim Owen Goldberg to Frank Gehry, to cover up his jewish trace.

Frank Gehry's work shows an influence from his modernist predecessor Le Corbusier, such as his Notre Dame du Haut. However, as a post-modern deconstructivist architect, Frank further breaks away from the symmetrical aesthetic and balance of modernist architecture. By creating anti-physics and lost centre-balance structures, his work were dominated with curves, visual conflicts, wraped walls, that they become unconventional but functional sculptures.

Selected works and images of Frank Gehry:
1. Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, Germany (1989)
(Photographer, Don Wong)
2. Frederick Weisman Museum of Art, University of Minnesota, USA (1990)
3. Disney Village, Disneyland Resort Paris, France (1992)
4. Cinematique Francaise, Paris, France (1994)
5. Dancing House, Prague, Czech Republic (1995)
6. Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Bilbao, Spain (1997)
7. Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, California, USA (2003)
8. Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park, Chicago, Illinois, USA (2004)
etc.

Official Website: Sketches of Frank Gehry