"I Have an Idea" – Frank Gehry Exhibition

Frankly speaking, I'm not in that fond of his architectures, since I cannot but feel his egoistic motivation behind his buildings, which sometimes prioritize the architect's passion over lives or activities of people who use it. I believe in professionalism whose golden rule is to prioritize clients' interest, and I think that is why I don't like it that much.

Just to be clear – I love arts, but I don't like the products to have such an externality like architectures. Many people cannot choose the building they work or spend time (and that is the externality in this case), whereas we can choose which art products we buy and take to home. If it's a home, that is fine. However, if it's a huge public museum, that is totally a different matter. By the way, writing this passage, I was surprised that how I'm an old-fashioned conservative person.

That said, it is undeniable fact that he is the rock-star and front-runner among many other avant-garde architects and that he created architectures really unique and beautiful, and there was no reason not to go to the exhibition held at 21_21 Design Sight, the museum that was designed by Taku Sato who created my company logo.

There always is a problem in architecture exhibitions – almost always the venue is incapable of showing and communicating the sheer scale of architectures. Besides, the museum is even smaller than the normal ones. In the first room of the exhibition, surrounded by undressed concrete, the projectors show  270 degree view of his products, a nice way to circumvent the size issue.

The second room focuses on Gehry's idea on how to make idea. Yes the title of the exhibition is "I Have an Idea". In the video, Gehry reads the following letter. I felt that this is his counter arguments against a number of criticism towards his architectures.

Manifesto

So you get an idea. A stupid idea but you like it. So you look at it till you don’t like it. So then you make another model as another way of looking at the first stupid idea; and you like it but only for a little while. So then you hate some of it so you make another model to fix it but it looks different but you like it. So you look at it until you start to not like it then. You try to fix it and a new idea comes out which you like better and then you don’t like it so much but still a little. So guess what you do? Yes you make another model. So this goes on and on and on till you got so many models it costs a fortune to store them. But you go on anyway. More and more till voila the piece de resistance. It’s glorious, it’s cheap, it looks different. So nobody likes it.

You’d cry, you’d nearly die. Then the lord sends a messenger. He hypnotises all the people so they all like the idea. They want to steal the idea, they want to steal the models. They want a piece of your mind and soul. But you’re strong and don’t give it. you just want to make a new idea. You want to be alone to make new models – so expensive to store, and you keep going until you’re broke from storing the models.

That’s a major histoire. Its legendary and it’s true.

The sequel is people get jealous. That’s good if it makes them work hard to be better. Most of the time they work harder to destroy. This part’s difficult.

The third and the biggest room is devoted to show the design process of some of ongoing projects. Things start with a rough drawing of Gehry and then through a number of trials and errors, the final model comes out. At the first sight, I really doubt whether it really is the right drawing, but my architect friend told me that drawings of star architects are always like that.

The initial drawing

The final model

The exhibition omits most of the verbal explanation of the very design process, just showing a number of the quotes and prototypes before the final model. That is the striking difference from the exhibition of Norman Foster held nearby the site.

My take-on from this exhibition is that Gehry is an artist rather an architect. He loves to make something new and different, and that explains why he likes to be with artists not architects. He is an artist who loves to make something big enough that people can live and work inside. Granted, most of the best architects in the world have some sort of artistic minds in their heart, and it may be just a matter of intensity.

Let it be, as long as there are clients who ask him to pursue his passion.