Frank Gehry

Here's an interesting fact about coffee: there is no such thing as a 'coffee flavor.' I mean, there is for ice cream or other crap like that, but real coffee is just a combination of multiple flavors. There are six parts to a cup of coffee where flavors can reside: the aroma, the body, the flavor, the sweetness, the aftertaste, and the acidity. Each can be ranked on a scale of 1-10, and is also assigned a different flavor profile. My favorite roast is an Ethiopian SOE called Deri Kocha, which originates from the area Ethiopia of the same name. Roasted at only a 2, it's incredibly light and full of floral flavors. As a pour over, it's similar to a raspberry tea, and as espresso, it has a similar taste to Blood Orange. Unfortunately, it's out of season at the moment, so I need to wait a year to get some more. 

And now, onto the homework. 

I don't love documentaries. As one who has studied film, I understand that the purpose of film is not to portray reality, but rather to give the viewer the illusion of reality, which is excellent in fiction and disastrous when applied to actual events (and we wonder why the news tells us nothing). Thus, even after watching a documentary about Frank Gehry, I feel I know very little about him. Was he a genius? Was he crazy with enough smart engineers behind him? I was bothered by how he had people building the models for him. I liked his bluntness. I disliked how he left his wife to become a better architect. 

I shall therefore comment upon what I know to be true (and even that tainted by music and camera angles): the process and the architecture itself. 

Of what I saw of Frank's process was this: making lots of loose handed sketches, free handed and wild, and then building model after model, very quickly, then scanning the models into a computer to get all the technical measurements. Initial models were quick, made from whatever elements were lying around. As they became more technical, craftsmen would make more technical ones out of wood and plexi. Models can then be made in the computer using a 3D scanning tool. 

The architecture itself is wild, unlike anything I've ever seen. It's full of compound curves and movement, weird angles. When looking at it in the midst of a city, it's like seeing an aborigine in the midst of a business meeting.  My initial feeling is one of wonder and awe, which is rare. Buildings bore me unless they're old. 

However, there seems to be something missing in his work. The structure is a sprawling jazz piece, an epic cacophony of structure, shape, and material, but still a cacophony, never the less. Parts awkwardly jut out here, curve there. It's all very free, individual, but not cohesive. It does not point to something greater than itself. This of course, is fine. I just feel without it, it feels lacking. 

In the video, his Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, was called to a cathedral. I cannot agree. Cathedrals point upward, spiritually. The purpose of a Cathedral is to remind humanity that it is small, that us as artists do not create, but rather tap the great beauty. 

However, Frank's work does have an aspect I love: whimsical fun. Every piece I look at of his feels like it was fun to make, as if he were playfully putting his middle finger up to stodgy architects whenever their backs were turned. And I like that a lot. He seems to tap a simple, childlike joy in his work that makes the impossible possible, and trades practicality and utility for laughter and beauty, a feast for the human soul.