Customer Reviews

Conversations with Frank Gehry

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This is a breezily readable, generously and eclectically illustrated book, packed with personal, practical and historical revelations and observations that paradoxically don't really add up to anything.

But wait: that may very well be the point.

First the good stuff. There are many, many pages here that are worth the purchase price: a photo of the model for the Disney Concert Hall that won the 1988 competition and that looks nothing like the finished building, another photo of what the Disney Concert Hall would have looked like had it been clad in travertine as was the original plan, Gehry's stories about surviving the Army and Harvard, Philip Johnson's assessment of the Bilbao Guggenheim, Gehry's practice of leaving building models outside for a year to see what they'll look like in the changing light of the seasons--and many more. I don't want to spoil all of them.

Here's what isn't here: any singular philosophy or manifesto, anything admonishing or inspirational, any broad program or narrow purpose. In the sixties, Gehry started using rough, exposed framework and junky materials like chainlink and corrugated metal because, craftsmanship in construction had declined, and a perfect finish would have been impossible. In the seventies, he turned an ordinary house inside-out and outraged half of Santa Monica-because he needed extra space for his sons. In the eighties, he won the commission for the Disney Concert Hall by making an emotional appeal to Walt Disney's accessibility and unpretentiousness. In the nineties, he created the most astonishing building of the late twentieth century by first refusing a commission to repurpose an existing structure.

Is there a pattern here? A take home lesson? None that I can see. It's all collaborative, and contingent, and improvisational, playful, experimental. Let's try this. That's not going to work? Then let's try this instead. Follow your genius. Go with the flow. Maybe it's all a big mystery.

But no, there's not even any mystery. In one of the funniest exchanges in the book, Gehry says, (of the museum in Bilbao) "They wanted a Sydney Opera House;" to which Barbara Isenberg replies, "How could you tell that?" which prompts from Gehry, "They said, 'We want you to build us a Sydney Opera House.'"

And that's exactly what he did. No big mystery. Not even anything to puzzle over.

In many respects, this book is as open, obvious, user-friendly, and beautiful and witty as one of Gehry's buildings. But it's also, paradoxically, empty. The buildings are filled with music and people and art. The book is filled with words and explanations, which are, I think, playfully, delightfully, even insightfully, beside the point.

I loved this book! Aside from the well documented and beautifully photographed architectural
references, this book offered a great personal view of Frank Gehry's early years, his influences, personal struggles and the evolution of his design and thought process.

I didn't want the book to end. Hopefully, a follow-up book will include more
of FG's early experiences and allow us to see where this next phase of his life will take him.

This book makes me want to go to Bilbao to see the Guggenheim!

'Conversations with Frank Gehry' is an approachable look at his art, providing insight into the precision and planning of seemingly abstract architecture. The casual familiarity Isenberg has with Gehry is refreshing, allowing for a genuine representation of a complicated genius. I especially enjoyed the discussions on Gehry's forthcoming buildings. Well worth the read!

A long-time fan of Gehry's work, I found Barbara Isenberg's warm and intimate dialogue with him to provide a more personal side of the man. The photographs, layout, and design of the book make for a stunning portrait of his amazing talent. I've been giving this book to my clients with rave reviews and plan to give it as a guest gift for the holidays as opposed to just another bottle of wine. What an enjoyable treat!

What I enjoyed most about this book and a book by Steven Holl I read concurrently was the lack of dogma I've found so prevalent and so off-putting in much of the architecture philosophies I have read. Rather than touting their methods as the best and only way to do architecture, these two come across simply as humans telling stories. Without trying to elevate their ideas or subjugate other philosophies, they present their work with enthusiasm tempered by realism. I found the personality that comes across in Gehry's dialogue makes his philosophies and practices accessible. It wasn't necessarily mind-blowing stuff, but I found the stories quite interesting. A passage I particularly liked was about Gehry advising his students to "be yourself, you're the expert on you. you're the only expert and thats a nice place to be." If only more teachers asked this of their students.

For a long time I have been following the architectural work of Frank Gehry, through articles in the media. Each time I see his work it appears very sculptural and different from the norm. I wonder how does he justify these buildings fitting in the context? How does he conceive the concept? How does he synthesize the form? Surely his mind must be different and there must be a lot more to his mind than meets the eye. With this questions galore in mind, I was drawn to this book like 'Winnie the pooh' to 'hunny'.

To begin with, the title itself assures the reader that this is not a coffee table book with just pretty pictures. There is an awesome conversation through out the book, that reveals the brilliance of a very creative mind, in his own words. Now for the gist of the book. The book is about the evolution of a creative mind that leads to a fabulous architectural career. In doing so, it takes the reader on a fantastic journey. A journey of buildings that starts with wood, stucco and goes on to steel, titanium and beyond. What it reveals is a heady combination of old world charm and new-age technology. By old world I mean a mind that assimilates, analyses, synthesizes and creates. When you combine this deep thinking with top of the line technology, what you have is a Frank Gehry design.

To illustrate this, there are many examples of how he uses art (mostly paintings) as an inspiration to generate concepts and forms e.g. the Giorgio Morandi's bottle villages made him design homes as villages i.e. each room being an independent entity. He says, "When I discovered the pictures of Morandi, I just went nuts because Morandi was drawing bottles which were essentially one room buildings and creating villages of bottles....You get a lot of stuff out of it. It breaks down the scale. It humanizes without resorting to decoration, so individual pieces can be very tough and industrial even. The architecture is the play between the spaces....It interested me that a building itself could be pretty banal, but if you juxtaposed it with something else you could create an ensemble that was more interesting. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts."

Two more fascinating examples of using a painting for inspiration are about how the pleated headdress in a Vermeer painting inspired him to generate forms in Maggie Centre (Dundee, Scotland) and the Issey Miyake store in New York city. Paintings inspire him so much that he frequently visits museums to remove a mental block!

As for his buildings fitting in the context, one only has to read about it to understand how well they fit. A classic example is the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis. The client wanted the museum to relate to the Mississippi river. "Frank chose a gauge of stainless steel that's thin enough so it ripples and breaks up the light in the same way the ripples on the river do... the sunset is reflected off the building in the same way it is reflected off the Mississippi." There are many global projects discussed in the book, that reveal his understanding of the context. It was a treat to read about the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Guggenheim Museum (Bilbao), Stata Center at MIT, Pritzker Pavilion (Chicago), Nationale - Nederlanden Building (Prague) and the IAC building in New York. There is a photo with 30 design options for a single project (Disney Hall). An architect who works that hard is surely best suited for the project.

The dialogue in the book brings out the struggles, agonies and ecstasies of each project. A classic statement that reveals this is when he saw Bilbao for the first time, he said, " Oh my God, what have I done to these people?" The narration also has many lighter moments e.g. when he says, "Neutra was so full of himself " and Frank Lloyd Wright "had a master-slave" hierarchy in his office. You know how he thinks by the way he talks using metaphors. An example that is hard to forget is when he says that many buildings in Paris have a pretty facade and a plain rear elevation. Its like a woman in a Oscar-de-la-renta dress with a curler behind her head! The dialogue is complimented with over 200 photos of his projects and building models. To add to this visual feast are many hand drawn sketches that reveal the genius in his hand. Most of them seem to be minimalist doodles in fluid strokes, drawn with a cool confidence, that comes only with experience.

Besides architecture, it was interesting to read about how his creativity is applied to designing other products e.g. furniture, paper lighting, lamps and jewelry. The story behind the conception of the million dollar Bilbao brooch was truly hilarious.

This book answered all the questions I had posed in my mind about his work. This book demonstrates how a mind can assimilate different sights, people etc to create great architecture. A mind that operates at so many levels is sheer genius and an inspiration to the younger generation of architects. His buildings are a true legacy of his life. The book is inspiring, recharging and makes you see the world in a new light. It may even make you think like Frank Gehry. Thank you Mr. Gehry for creating such a great legacy. In conclusion, this book is a 'must read' and keeper for architects.

Ratna
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It's a fascinating overview of Gehry's life and work. For those looking to dig deeper, however, it can be frustrating.

Half of one chapter is devoted to the controversial mixed-use Atlantic Yards project (basketball arena + 16 towers) in Brooklyn, but the interview was conducted in 2005, generations ago in the Atlantic Yards saga.

So there are a lot of questions left hanging: Gehry's relationship with his client (Gehry laid off his staff working on Atlantic Yards, but is said to still be on the project), his commitment to his principles (he's resisted after-the-fact cost-cutting by clients, but developer Forest City Ratner wants to cut the arena cost in half), and his reaction to criticism in the past two years (Nicolai Ouroussoff, the NYTimes architectural critic and generally a Gehry supporter, has suggested the architect should walk away from the project).
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