It's actually quite easy to understand if you've seen Disney Hall

An open letter to Frank Gehry, by Jonathan Lethem:

I've been struggling to understand how someone of your sensibilities can have drifted into such an unfortunate alliance, with such potentially disastrous results.

Comments

[Adam Villani]

That's a great letter... let's hope (wish?) Gehry takes it to heart. Although I should note that as bizarre as Disney Hall is, it's not like there was any real neighborhood to speak of around it.

[David Sucher]

Your remark about the lack of neighborhood around Disney Hall is certainly true, Adam. But I would suggest that on three sides of this full-block project Gehry gave no reason for anyone to want to be there. So in that sense, I see Disney Hall as not living up to the goal, stated by all, of acting as a catalyst for pedestrian-oriented development.

[Adam Villani]

You're right about the projects along Grand Avenue; planners for downtown L.A. have long touted vague ideas about making that part of downtown pedestrian-friendly, but the only thing they put there is monumental buildings that don't bear the slightest relation to the sidewalk or to each other. That new plan for a bunch of stuff across Grand from Disney Hall looks like it could be an interesting place, but the idea that they're working toward some kind of pedestrian-friendly environment is a complete joke.

Really, the Grand Avenue Corridor works only as a neat route to drive along and point out the wacky-looking buildings from. I suppose that trying to navigate the bi-level one-way streets works as a an interesting real-world logic puzzle, if you're interested in that sort of thing.

[KIETH Nissen]

Lethem has an exalted idea of what the architect does. Architects do not decide the building program. Gehry must have known the numbers when he signed on to the project and he thought he could make it
successful.... and probably enhance his reputation. His decision was made then.

Whining about the loss of a clock visible from the freeway seems weak and silly. The other stuff is good criticism but the decisions he (rightly) criticizes are not Gehrys, they are Ratners.

I don't think Gehry is a good architect and it is likely that someone else could have done better but it's not reasonable to expect an architect, after signing the contract, to tell the developer that the program too ambitious and then threaten resignation (he'd probably spend a lot of time in court). Gehry says he would but that's PR. I can't imagine an architect doing that.

[Kingsley S Hall]

I may have some interesting thoughts to some folks about urban and city planning because of the unusual perspective I have by having been blessed with two generations of efforts by both my father and I within the sometimes intense involvement in related government and private sector processes.

First weird thought that comes to my mind is the difference between the number of professional planners that are public employees or private consultants involved with the administrative law part of planning as differentiated with the relatively few planners that are employed by either government or private sector with job descriptions that allow them to think with at least some creative initiative
.
Most of our college education curriculums except as provided by those few institutions that have pioneered with contract studies programs have offered degrees in areas of expertise long after the area of concern identified as a potential career. This has effected many folks my age for instance; those of us that worked in aircraft design at Boeing years before you could achieve a degree anywhere in the US (including UW) in Aeronautical engineering, those of us that took courses in electrical engineering offering studies or degrees either in power or communications but not automation or computer circuitry etc., those of us that like myself that went back to college in 1960 with my only intent to take the first two hour course offered in computer science. (Now you can get a doctorate and I believe that 2 hr. course was harder), and now we finally get to my formal education or lack of it in urban & city planning. It turns out I audited (while a student of EE) a college course (after which I was admitted by examination to a Associate Member of the then AIP not to be confused with my Father a Member of AIP) while my retired father was still alive in urban & city planning within the school of architecture. He looked at the text and my notes provided by the people who had never worked in the field and was horrified by the stupidity. Not about opinions but how opinions were at that time allegedly handled or not studied both in the past and present within the planning profession and administrative laws governing same.

He pointed out among other things that The AIP (American Institute of Planners) (of which he was a member while Tech. Dir of Chicago Plan Commission ) was (now non-existent) the only such organization that was ever admitted into the National Science Foundation. Only later when I entered the field both as a public employee (of Grays Harbor County, Clallam County, King County, City of Sumner, and as a private consultant to other private & government entities thence retire did I understood and concur with his various critical observations.

When my father worked as technical director of the Chicago Plan Commission Staff the Commission allowed him to utilize most of his departments efforts on development of research methods and production of various types of Comprehensive plans. One example of a result of this was the first (circa 1948) and maybe the only parcel by parcel land use study inventory ever produced for a major city by cartography within in the two volumes still studied with envy as a model under consideration but never since attempted again anywhere today. The State of Delaware came close in 1969 when they borrowed a copy of this effort which was returned after I developed some similar computer software for them and the State of Washington but I went out of business. Chicago used Hollarith cards, tabulating machines, etc. in 1948 . I still used punch cards on a IBM-1130 system in 1969. It would be fun to but still not easy to attempt on today’s modern computers. But, this and many other such efforts are not done today because most planning department personnel spend most of their time enforcing the administrative laws. There are very few urban & city planners allowed to think out of the box. It’s not in their or anyone else’s job description. I think that now that I am 72 years old and totally retired I am for the first time allowed by both lack of any supervision and lack of any financial pressure from clients to be objective about my own or other peoples ideas, projects, environmental concerns, property rights issues, and a host of other concepts that are almost as bad as the military chain of command (I admit) must dictate. i.e “Your’s is to do or die. Not to reason why”.