Frank Gehry……Trojan Architect!
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I saw a programme by chance last night on T.V. about Frank Gehry and it featured his rock/pop museum in the now very ‘trendy’ Seattle city, USA. What a building, Phew! sheer sculpture, sheer dynamism as like his museum in Seville, Spain. Somebody please commission this man to build something in Dublin or Ireland while we have pots of money. The Dublin docklands would be perfect for a piece; well come to think of it maybe not…….the DDDA & co would find his work incomprehensible and too radical for their straitjacketed conventional concepts. Anyway here’s to Gehry and indeed fellow veterans Phillip Johnson, Cesar Pelli, etc….. such grand old men of architecture could teach budding new architects a thing or two about style and flair. On the subject of rock/pop museums, pity about the one in Sheffield, England and it’s failure to attract the public. Great building but wrong location, it should have been built in London.
It would almost seem inevitable that Gehry will be asked to do a building in Dublin. Ben Van Berkel’s prediction of architects becoming the fashion designers of the future would seem very much to be true. Unfortunately Ireland in general seems to get/pick the diffusion range of the elite group of style architects – witness Calatrava’s bridges. We only want the white t-shirt with the big label on the front.
Does anyone remember Daniel Libeskind’s proposal for the National Gallery? Now that would have ruffled a few feather’s not only of the public but of the design community also.
Do you rally want to expose us to the embarrasment of the Planning Appeals and Hearings etc. and the usual circus that ensues. Maybe I’m too cynical, but Dublin is just not ready for Architecture with a capital “H” like that yet.
And it’s a shame: who, in all honesty, except Iberio-philes, had ever heard of Bilbao before the Guggenheim landed?I think chasing fahsionable architects is pretty naff (if a handy way of promoting regeneration projects).
Libeskind’s proposal for the National Gallery was way below his usual standard – bit of a near miss in my opinion.
As for embarrassing planning battles – the exact same thing happened in London with the V&A spiral designed by Daniel Libeskind. An ultra-conservative blue-rinse faction hads the garden clippers out for it. It got planning and wasthen bizarrely turned down for lottery funding on the basis that it wasn’t a striking enough landmark.
Hurray for foreign renowned architects; they make landmarks and artworks for today and the future putting cities on the map and giving them street cred. Shallow it may sound to some but true it is. One can name all the world famous cities and all have a particular landmark/s that make that city unique in it’s own way, whether the piece be a hit or a miss. Signature architecture act as a focal point, a nucleus around which all life can buzz. There is no denying that so why view it in a sceptical pessimistic way.
Being famous doesn’t guarantee good buildings, just famous buildings.
Daw!…You think I don’t bleedin know that, you just don’t understand the point.
Who was the last renowned international architect to have worked in Dublin or Ireland producing a work of international note. Probably Lutyens……Has’nt that other old gentleman architect IM Pei and partners got something planned too for Trinity College, Pearse St. Does anyone know if Kevin Roches national conference centre is going ahead.
Pei has nothing to do with the Trinity gig – he’s retired. It’s his partner, Harry Cobb.
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