Frank Gehry Gets Prickly

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Quoting Frank Gehry:

"Public buildings deserve to have a certain level of iconicity and personality. Historically, that's what makes them define the cities and communities they're in."

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Frank Gehry gets prickly: "It's not just plop". Exclusive interview.

By Hugh Pearman

I'm sitting opposite Frank Gehry over breakfast in an impossibly pretty sunlit town square in Arles, Provence. He's here to launch the plans for his "Parc des Ateliers" project, described as a cultural Utopia. But I'm staring at a set of squiggles he's just drawn in my notebook, and wondering if I should ask him to sign them. He'd reached for a pen, as architects in conversation do, and started sketching away. "I'm doing these pop-up stores for Bono," he explains. "They're for his Product Red company. I'm really excited by them. They're like pieces of jigsaw." >>> Read More



07.25.2008

There's Something About Gehry

New Serpentine Pavilion's fractured design draws crowds
Iwan Baan/Courtesy Serpentine Gallery
The Serpentine Gallery’s annual foray into temporary architecture has brought Frank Gehry’s first English building to the crowds of Kensington Gardens. The result, a tumbling composition of wood, painted steel, and glass, is the nearest the gallery has got to a pavilion, in the traditional sense, since Zaha Hadid’s take in 2000, which reinvented the marquee tent. After Hadid’s project, the pavilions have become more like buildings, losing the lightness of touch, temporality, and playfulness one might hope to find in London’s famed royal park. >>> Read More
 

Fabrication or Construction?

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"The construction process is no longer linear and it no longer proceeds solely from the bottom up."

 

-- Stephen Kieren and James Timberlake, "Refabricating Architecture: How Manufacturing Methodologies are Poised to Transform Building Construction."

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If we were to compare the current state of technology or the state of affairs with the advances in the design and fabrication of cars, airplanes, and ships, the architectural industry seems to be trailing behind these respective industries, as far as project factors of time/cost/quality are concerned. The latter manage to reduce the fabrication times along with production cost and waste without compromising the quality; constantly embracing change in an ever-demanding market by extending the act of design beyond the assembly line.

While the architectural industry has grown ever more wasteful and environmental unfriendly, the engineering industry has succeeded in blurring the boundaries between thinkers and makers - seamlessly integrating substance with intent. That makes me wonder: Why isn’t architecture susceptible to transformation and progress?; Why are we still putting aesthetics above anything else?

Mean time, MoMA is currently holding an exhibition entitled, Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling.”

Richard and Su Rogers. Zip-Up Enclosures No. 1 and 2, 1968-71 Model. On behalf of Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners. (Image source: Slate.com)

Recommended reading: Instant House - Would you buy a home that was made in a factory? By Witold Rybcznski.

 

An Architect Unshackled by Limits of the Real World

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“With the triumph of liberal democracy and laissez-faire capitalism, the conversation came to an end. Everyone wanted to build, which left less room for certain kinds of architecture.”

-- Lebbeus Woods, quoted in Nicolai Ouroussoff's New York Times article, "An Architect Unshackled by Limits of the Real World"

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An Architect Unshackled by Limits of the Real World

By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF

In the early 1990s this irreverent New York architect produced a series of dark and moody renderings that made him a cult figure among...>>> Read More


Lebbeus Woods

 

Archifest 2008

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ARCHIFEST 2008

The 2nd Singapore ArchiFest is back, and invites everyone to celebrate the built environment, this October.

Revolving around the theme of Man+Environment, we invite you to re-examine our relationship between Architecture with the Environment...>>> Read More

 

Sasanarakkha: A Meditation Space For Practising Buddhism

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"there is a continuing need for the creation of festal places on the dwellings, places where individuals come together and affirm themselves as members of community, as they join in public enactments of the essential:celebrations of those central aspects of our life that maintain and give meaning to existence"

-- Karsten Harries, architectural critic

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A week had passed. It was 6.30 am last Sunday morning at the end of a three-day holiday cum working weekend. It had been raining cats and dogs for the past two days in Taiping, a town that had lived up to its reputation as the wettest town in Peninsular Malaysia. The sun was barely above the hills when the rays of sunlight broke the dawn of the misty morning. I put on my jogging sneakers and headed on to the valley of Maxwells Hill. From there, it would take me approximately 45 minutes of uphill walk before reaching my destination - Sasanarakkha, a Buddhist sanctuary nestled in the tropical foliage of once a durian plantation.

Mini Kutis (Photo source: Author)

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