Quote:
Originally Posted by plinko
I'm not a huge Gehry fan, but I think you are vastly underestimating the careful thought that goes into each project. It's something my friends and I in architecture school used to joke about as well (crumpling a piece of paper and throwing it down and proclaiming 'I'm done!'), but after a few years actually designing real buildings and a few more years exploring existing buildings done by guys like Gehry, I have alot more appreciation for what he does. Certainly not the one trick pony so many have made him out to be.
I think what often happens as well as that a 'starchitect' designs a certain type of structure and then subsequent clients and cities clamor for their own version of the same structure. I know for a fact that this is what happened with Gehry and Bilbao (I know an architect who worked in Gehry's office for many years).
Zumthor has done some amazing work.
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I can agree with this, my personal hatred for Gehry's work stems more about his work in relation to the site than what is actually built. The MIT building and all its issues, the dancing couple building in Prague and the issue with all the glass on the building in a city that still has alot of winter coal burning. The creation of odd spaces do to over conformity to the overall shape. The often times of hiding a typical or fairly traditional building with the use of and extended exterior surface...it is things like that that bother me about his work...though on the other end, I am sure he is getting clients that are wanting the next Bilbao, and for the money they are paying, he seems more than happy to give that to them, and as someone who has gone through architecture schooling, I can understand anyone for caving in for the money...what architect student doesnt sleep a couple hours of sleep at night during studios dreaming that they will one day make it rich off all of this.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SLO
Why? Why should architecture be headed in that direction?
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Have you read any of his books or studied any of his work? (not in the attacking you sense, just wondering because they are great books to read, very humbling and has that sense of true passion why anyone should want to be an architect.)
Zumthor is the kind of architect that sticks to regional work because it is an area he has known all his life and understands it fully. Projects from him can easily take a decade to complete because he wishes to take his time getting to know the site and the client. Each building he has designed as been an extension of both the site and client. None of his work can be copied and pasted somewhere else like so many other buildings that are built in the world. Much of Frank Gehry's work is an example of this cut and paste style (while each very unique) the Disney Opera house could of been constructed in any city and on any site and still read the same, a Frank Gehry building. Peter Zumthor is more about letting the architecture and the experience of that architecture have its own name, not the branding of the architect who designed it.
I personally think if we had more architects (and clients, of course) that cared about what was going to be constructed and why, as well as understanding that this is something that is more than likely going to be around longer that us, one would think that it would be the most important to get it right and filled with care so that it could withstand the test of time.