{"id":509,"date":"2014-10-24T13:12:40","date_gmt":"2014-10-24T11:12:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnkwhite.ie\/caracolas\/?p=509"},"modified":"2014-10-24T21:29:08","modified_gmt":"2014-10-24T19:29:08","slug":"frank-o-gehry-architect-royal-or-rebel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/johnkwhite.ie\/caracolas\/?p=509","title":{"rendered":"Frank O. Gehry Architect \u2013 Royal or Rebel?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, Spain bestows its highest cultural honour, el Premio Pr\u00edncipe de Asturias de las Artes, on Canadian-born, American architect Frank Gehry. The awards<\/a>, which began in 1981 at the behest of the then Prince of Asturias (Spain\u2019s title for royal heir) and now king, Felipe VI, has numerous categories (Arts, Letters, Social Sciences, Sports, etc<\/i>.), and has been awarded in the past to Bob Dylan, Woody Allen, Leonard Cohen, and Margaret Atwood. Little known outside of Spain, the annual arts Nobel here comes with \u20ac50,000 and a gala ceremony in Oviedo to the delight of the Spanish glitterati.<\/p>\n

\"PdeA\"<\/a> \"FrankGehrry\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Yesterday, however, Mr Gehry was guest speaker at a so-called \u201cdebate\u201d between him and acclaimed Spanish architect Rafael Moneo (premio<\/i> winner in 2012), entitled \u201cArquitectura: el futuro, en construcci\u00f3n<\/a>\u201d in Gij\u00f3n. I\u2019m not sure why it was called a debate (since no one debated), but about 300 or so were delighted to hear Mr Gehry\u2019s ideas about branding and architecture, and in particular about his Spanish creations: the Guggenheim in Bilbao and his recent Barcelona Fish.<\/p>\n

\"GehryUsandThem\"<\/a> \"GehryTheFish\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After waiting about 2 hours in a make-shift line, the first 200 of us plebs were ushered into the airport-hangar space (room is not quite right) \u2013 appropriate it would seem for a debate (or conversation) between two architects \u2013 and seated in the peanut gallery outside a reserved (reservado<\/i>) comfy-chair area for the hundred or so more well-connected dignitaries, who mostly arrived a few minutes before the start. One didn\u2019t have to see the debaters although one could sneak a peek if you craned your neck enough. The inelegant seating arrangements did make me think of John Lennon\u2019s remark at The Prince of Wales Theatre Royal Variety<\/a> show before the Beatles\u2019 final Twist and Shout number: \u201cFor those of you in the cheap seats I\u2019d like ya to clap your hands to this one; the rest of you can just rattle your jewelry!\u201d<\/p>\n

The odd seating arrangements immediately made me think about accessibility in buildings, wondering if I would hear any debate about who makes buildings and for whom, and so I was pleased when Mr Gehry referred to what an architectural student should be doing these days to get a leg up in the biz: \u201cYou have to be in charge or you will be marginalized.\u201d No doubt, good advice to his fellow all-stars more than budding young architects, but architecture as he further elegantly pr\u00e9cised is a \u201cprocess to create shapes and demystify them for construction.\u201d Five years of architectural school would seem long after that.<\/p>\n

His main motivation for making buildings he stated at the outset: \u201cIf someone calls me to do a building, if I like them, I accept.\u201d He has no agent or publicist although he acknowledged that today\u2019s young architects do. Well, not the four young architects I met in line, but I suppose he meant the older young Calatrava-like superstars. At 85 years old, he\u2019s the master of the modern architect pantheon, who still prefers making models \u201cto involve his team\u201d than working from a computer.<\/p>\n

\"GehryModel1\"<\/a> \"GehryModel2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To be sure, architecture today is about money and dealing with developers, although Mr Gehry noted that \u201cWhen people find out Bilbao was only $80 million, they don\u2019t believe it.\u201d Compared to his $207-million Walt Disney Concert Hall in his hometown Los Angeles the Guggenheim in Bilbao is a steal. I don\u2019t know what Mr Moneo\u2019s Roman Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels cost, which Mr Gehry noted he enjoyed seeing in his strolls around LA, and jokingly recalled that his pal had won the commission in a competition against him. One wonders what is different between a Roman Catholic cathedral and a Walt Disney concert hall \u2013 not the content it might seem.<\/p>\n

\"GuggenheimBilbao\"<\/a> \"LACath\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As the conversation continued, it was obvious that Mr Gehry makes iconic buildings with marketing and branding in mind. Of the conservative city organizers in Bilbao, he said that they originally wanted something like the Sidney Opera House to usher in \u201ca reawakening of a city\u201d and that \u201cBilbao\u2019s business model was amazing.\u201d Fortunately, Bilbao got Mr Gehry\u2019s impressive Cubist ship on the shores of the Nervion estuary, made of 33,000 pieces of gold-coloured, dimpled titanium. I can\u2019t think of another modern building that has rebranded a city as much as the Gehry-Guggenheim<\/a>, changing Bilbao\u2019s industrial past into a cultural future, and ushering in the new age of city-branding. One travels to Bilbao to see Gehry\u2019s art. Any city would kill for such tourism.<\/p>\n

If the conversation had ended there, however, one might think Mr Gehry was just another royal \u2013 making buildings for money and the establishment, who doesn\u2019t care much about what goes into a building or who uses it. Fortunately, at the end he briefly discussed his new project, an Obama-led initiative for impoverished schools called \u201cTurnaround<\/a>,\u201d where artists like himself and Elton John talk to poor students, and in Gehry\u2019s case get them to build cities with blocks in the classroom, encouraging a much-needed lateral thinking found lacking in their lives. The program has begun in 10 elementary pilot schools, he added, all with less than a 5-percent graduation rate with hopes of expanding to 100. Rebellious thinking indeed. As Mr Gehry noted about such new-age education methods, it\u2019s \u201cmy latest fun thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then, he was whisked off without questions into the waiting black cars not more than ten metres from the airport-hangar-esque hall. It was like a presidential motorcade. All that was missing was the red carpet. Or at least I think he was \u2013 it was hard to see.<\/p>\n

I wish we could all be Frank Gehry, superstar. Unfortunately, we can\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Frank Gehry, <\/i>Sobre el terreno<\/i><\/a> (From the ground up), October 24 to January 12, Centro de Arte y Creaci\u00f3n Industrial, Universidad Laboral, Gij\u00f3n.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, Spain bestows its highest cultural honour, el Premio Pr\u00edncipe de Asturias de las Artes, on Canadian-born, American architect Frank Gehry. The awards, which began in 1981 at the behest of the then Prince of Asturias (Spain\u2019s title for royal … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[26,13,24,14],"class_list":["post-509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spain","tag-art","tag-northern-spain","tag-serious","tag-tourism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnkwhite.ie\/caracolas\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnkwhite.ie\/caracolas\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnkwhite.ie\/caracolas\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnkwhite.ie\/caracolas\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnkwhite.ie\/caracolas\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=509"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/johnkwhite.ie\/caracolas\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":520,"href":"http:\/\/johnkwhite.ie\/caracolas\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509\/revisions\/520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnkwhite.ie\/caracolas\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnkwhite.ie\/caracolas\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnkwhite.ie\/caracolas\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}