We all know a building when we see one, and there's generally no mystery about the developmental stages. The sketches and plans are drawings of buildings. The models are miniature buildings. And the buildings are buildings. But with Gehry's work, the sketches, models and even the final edifices look less like buildings and more like the curious rumblings of a creative mind that tend to be classified as art. In fact, most successful are the buildings that look like gigantic public sculpture that somebody had the forethought to hollow out to make use of the interior spaces.

The 1991 Chiat/Day building in Venice, Calif., is a sculpture within a sculpture. Gehry essentially devised two buildings: a three-story white metal curve that evokes a ship's prow, and a copper-plated abstract forest. Meeting the two in the middle is a pair of three-story binoculars originally conceived by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen for another building the three were collaborating on. The binoculars stand on their lenses, the space in between serves as the entrance to the underground garage and each ocular lens is a skylight into the conference rooms the sculpture houses.

One of Gehry's more whimsical projects is the '96 Nationale-Nederlanden building in the Czech Republic, colloquially referred to as "the Fred and Ginger building." The building forms one corner among several blocks of ancient, decorative five- and six-story structures in central Prague. Gehry's building is similar in surface and color to the surrounding buildings. The ground floor is glass and the remaining floors are stacked on top, covered with undulating rows of windows. At the corner the structure erupts into two vertical cylindrical forms slightly taller than the rest of the building. One cylinder ("Fred") matches the rest of the building, sits atop a post, is slightly flared at top and bottom and is topped with a tangled ball of copper. The second cylinder ("Ginger") is a sheer column of glass, pinched in at the "waist," flaring more drastically at the second floor into a "skirt" and perched atop several gracefully curved posts. At the fifth floor, a small canopy juts out from Ginger's waist toward Fred in an equally abstract reference to the arms of the dancing couple.

The natives of Bilbao have taken to referring to the Guggenheim as "the artichoke," which is the best description on record of the abstract titanium volumes that form the central focal point of the building. The artichoke is complemented by nearly rectangular volumes of limestone and large, slanted expanses of gridded glass. A long, low volume extends out from the central mass, along the river and under a freeway bridge, sprouting up again on the other side.

Like so many of Gehry's buildings, it seems to embrace everything around it, while also sitting in stark contrast to it all. The interior spaces have also been heralded. Gehry is, himself, among the few critics who feel the interior flaw is in the scale of the massive main gallery. There is some concern about the dearth of art in the world that would not be dwarfed by the space. Gehry would like to install a few extra walls, but the museum administrators don't have any plans to modify it. In the words of Cal-Poly architecture professor Tom Fowler, "The museum has a godly scale to it, but is also very intimate regarding nooks and crannies to explore and hide in. It's like inhabiting a cubist painting."

But the Bilbao Guggenheim is not only an impressive piece of functional sculpture, it has also changed the way people think about the field of architecture. Gehry has proven that people will travel halfway around the world to look at a building as well as its contents. It stands as evidence that a building can put a town on the map. And it has companies and organizations all over the globe thinking of architects as brand names and wanting to wear one for themselves. So while it has garnered a great deal of fame for Gehry, it has also done much to renew interest in architecture and enliven the ongoing debate about architecture's role in our society.

Despite all his success, Gehry continues to feel misunderstood. He makes a lot of seemingly random comments these days about how his buildings don't leak, a reaction, no doubt, to the news that part of his 1989 Rocklin, Calif., manufacturing complex for Herman Miller (age-old rival of Knoll) is being demolished and replaced by a design from another firm. Apparently the centerpiece of the complex -- a 70-foot steel trellis wrapped in copper -- is leaking and staining the company cafeteria, which it straddles. Gehry insists the flaw was in the execution and not in his design.

But it goes beyond that incident. After nearly four decades of being odd man out among his peers, Gehry has developed a tinge of defensiveness. He wants to make it clear to everyone that he's not "just making shapes," that he designs from the inside out and often doesn't even make a sketch until after a period of scale experimentation with the internal space requirements of a project. He's upset that the roofers at Bilbao allowed polyurethane to drip down the titanium and -- despite his pleading -- didn't clean it off until it was too late, which has led some to comment that he didn't know what he was doing with the titanium.

And his newest fear is that another of his projects, the proposed Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, will be perceived as "son of Bilbao," even though it was designed a decade ago. After seeing Bilbao and before finally agreeing to proceed with the project, Disney asked that the exterior of the building (a cross between Bilbao and the Sydney Opera House) be switched from limestone to metal.

Still, while Gehry's defensiveness may be understandable, it's hardly necessary anymore. In 1998, Gehry finally got what had been alluding him all these years: the recognition of his peers. The American Institute of Architects awarded him the Gold Medal, which Gehry described to Architectural Record as "a wonderful honor ... It's like in your family: you know they don't think very much of you and then, all of a sudden, you find out they love you. That's how it feels."

This year saw the publication of the 596-page "Frank O. Gehry: The Complete Works," which is as premature as was his lifetime achievement award from the Pritzker people. Gehry & Associates has a mile-long list of projects in the hopper. Among them, the Disney Concert Hall, scheduled to open in 2002; a new aluminum stacking chair for Knoll; a new wing for the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, which he said at a press conference "looks like a bunch of colored pieces of paper"; a new bulding for the SoHo branch of the Guggenheim; and an extensive plan to do even more for Panama than he's done for Bilbao. There's no reason to believe that, when all is said and done, his Guggenheim will stand out as his masterwork. After all, this is Frank Gehry. Chances are he's just getting started.

Recent Stories