Does Fallows accept Gehry's lame excuse? What would Jane Jacobs think?

It's not clear if he does.

The story so far: Frank Gehry (so famous as to need no descriptor such as "star architect") appears at a conference in Aspen and and takes questions from the audience.

Fallows' take — Fifty-nine and a half minutes of brilliance, thirty seconds of hauteur — (he was there):

The second or third was from a fairly insistent character whose premise was that great "iconic" buildings nonetheless fell short as fully attractive and effective "public places," where people were drawn to congregate and spend time. He said he was challenging Gehry to do even more to make his buildings attractive by this measure too.

Putting aside the de haut en bas "insistent character," Fallows restates the starchitecture question in a fair if unenthusiastic way and he doesn't seem to grasp the importance of the question. But he is rightfully shocked by Gehry's rude answer and it is that rude response which is the subject of his post here, which chides Gehry for his tone (though not for Gehry's lack of response.)

Gehry didn't like the question and said that the indictment didn't apply to his own buildings. He said that the facts would back him up --  and as the questioner repeated the challenge, Gehry said that he found the question "insulting." 

Fair enough. The guy did keep pushing. On the other hand, anyone who has ever appeared in public has encountered questions a hundred times as personally challenging as this.

But the questioner asked one more time, and Gehry did something I found simply incredible and unforgettable. "You are a pompous man," he said -- and waved his hand in a dismissive gesture, much as Louis XIV might have used to wave away some offending underling. He was unmistakably shooing or waving the questioner away from the microphone, as an inferior -- again, in a gesture hardly ever seen in post-feudal times. 

I was sorry that I witnessed those thirty seconds. They are impossible to forget and entirely change my impression of the man. I was more amazed when part of the audience, maybe by reflex, applauded. When the video of this episode goes up on the Ideas Festival site, judge for yourself. 

I think Gehry's behavior is weird long before his overt rudeness. Gehry refuses to answer the question and claims his buildings don't fail in creating public places.

Well Mr. Gehry, climb down off that horse. It's for us, the public judgment over decades, to say whether you produce urban architecture or not. It is not for you to pass judgment on whether your architecture helps create a city or just a big suburb.

No fool Gehry. He can recognize a useful ally i.e. a writer widely respected (and correctly — I think Fallows is one of the most perceptive and balanced socio/political critics we have) , with access to reputable media and best of all with no obvious experience in writing about buildings and the cities they make. So he emails Fallows, whom I gather he doesn't know. Fallows posts the email. Gehry writes:

Dear Mr. Fallows -

Fair enough - your impression.  I have a few lame excuses.  One is that I'm eighty and I get freaked out with petty annoyances more than I ever did when I was younger.  Two, I didn't really want to be there - I got caught in it by friends.  And three - I do get questions like that and this guy seemed intent on getting himself a pulpit.   I think I gave him an opportunity to be specific about his critique.  Turns out that he followed Tommy Pritzker [the moderator of Gehry's session] around the next day and badgered him about the same issues.  His arguments, according to Tommy, didn't hold much water.  I think what annoyed me most was that he was marketing himself at everyone's expense.  I apologize for offending you.  Thanks for telling me.

Best Regards,

Frank Gehry

Yes it was good of Gehry to make the gesture of an apology.

But overall his "apology" was a veiled attack on a perspective which he wouldn't name and with which he wouldn't deal.

The perspective, of course, is that "starchitecture" can and most often does have a negative impact on cities. And that as a (or the) leading starchitect, Gehry should be willing to answer the question, the question being, framing it in terms of a battle of the celebraties: What would Jane Jacobs think of Gehry's work? Does Gehry's work meet, on any fairhanded assessment, "the Jane Jacobs test" for a good street and city? I say it fails profoundly.

And one can agree or disagree with my own ultimate conclusion, but I was sorry to see that Gehry was unable/unwilling to address the issue. He dismisses the question with an ad hominem attack and appeals to the authority of "Tommy" (Pritzker — presumably of the family which has done its own share of city-destruction through its usually anti-urban hotels) that the "insistent character's" questions are unimportant. But the question is important and deserve Gehry's response.

Fallows characterizes the apology as "classy." I see nothing classy in it except that it pretends to be an apology which is better than no apology at all.

My own view is that one can thread the needle — it is in fact possible for starchitecture to be good urbanism if it is done with urbanism in mind. No time for the explanation right now but the solution is extremely simple. Why won't Gehry take up the issue? He must be able to see how profoundly un-urban a building Disney Hall is. And he's gotta be able to see the extremely simple solution. Why the silence? Let it rip Mr. Gehry. Come down off your throne.

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Sorry about the weird formatting. I am having trouble figuring out the new TypePad.

Comments

[Daniel Nairn]

I believe that the person questioning Gehry was actually Fred Kent, of the Project for Public Spaces. Hardly a petty layman looking for a pulpit. Kent knows public spaces as they are used well, and it would have been nice if Gehry had engaged with him on a respectful level. This is worthwhile topic.

[AW]

Why is Disney Hall "profoundly un-urban?" I am unable to attach any meaning to that insult at all. It seems to me one of the great buildings of our time, and to fit in its context downtown in a fascinating way. I walked around it, in it, over it, for a couple of hours a year or so ago and then walked around the neighborhood to approach it from different sides, and see it appear down different blocks, and I thought it wonderful from every angle. Unlike anything in its neighborhood, but having a vivid conversation with the neighborhood.

Could the writer elaborate on what's un-urban about this?

[David Sucher]

AW.
If you indeed walked around the entire building then you know that 3 sides of it at sidewalk levelare dead blank walls.

Dead blanks walls kill urbanism.

[Josh Peterson]

Mr. Sucher, I agree wholeheartedly with your indictment of Gehry, but I think you're missing an opportunity with AW -- your condescending tone is unjustified, and the question-begging "dead blank walls kill urbanism" won't persuade anyone. Maybe the space limitations of a comments thread preclude a detailed answer, but how about a link to a longer piece that could educate AW and the rest of us?

[David Sucher]

Josh Peterson.
I appreciate your question and am sorry you took my directness for condescension and my remark about blank walls as question-begging.

As you say, it was just a comment and moreover I have gone over this material -- specifically and at length about Disney Hall -- on this blog. Moreover I thought by now that it was common-knowledge, especially to readers of a blog on urbanism, that blank walls are bad. And I don't mean that in a condescending way it all but very flat — it's a statement akin to saying that car drivers prefer smooth roads and hardly needing of explanation. Guess I was wrong.

[Benjamin Hemric]

Re: What would Jane Jacobs think?

Actually, the one quote from Jane Jacobs on Frank Gehry that I've been able to discover can be interpreted as being somewhat positive! The quote, however, might also be interpreted as being nuanced or ambivalent, but it's not as scathingly negative as one might think.

I've never been much of a fan of Gehry's (although I've grown to appreciate his work more over the years, I still think, however, that it is usually vastly overpraised AS URBANISM), and a few years ago I was hoping to hear what devastingly negative things Jacobs (whose husband was an architect) would have to say about his work (and the work of the other "starchitects"). I did find a quote -- I think it's in one of those Jacobs interviews that are available on-line -- and Jacobs, seemingly admiringly, more or less, "Well, he certainly knows how to site his buildings." So in that interview, at least, I was very disappointed! (I believe the interview was done about the time Gehry was designing that building at MIT, but the quote may or may not be in reference to that building but to either Balboa or his work in general?)

Now, of course, this doesn't mean that Jacobs approved, in general, of Gehry's (and other starchitect's) architecture but, in that interview at least, she did pass up an opportunity to really let Gehry have it.

Also, in another interview, the interviewer mentions that at some meeting or another Jacobs strongly defended a Mies van der Rohe building in Toronto from the criticisms of a friend of hers (the mayor, or the former mayor, of Toronto). While not detailing what, exactly, Jacobs said, Jacobs seemed to agree that she had indeed defended the building. (I get the impression that she was saying that the building shouldn't be torn down, but saved and rewoven into the fabric of the city.)

In her books themselves (and in a number of other interviews) Jacobs does, of course, seem to strongly criticize a number of aspects of "starchitecture" (without using that expression). I think in one of the on-line interviews, for instance, she talks about how her husband said something like, "The first question an architect should ask himself is how the building will work in the environment in which it is set." And in an interview with an architect who was a colleague of her husband's, that architect mentions how Jacobs (who was an informal consultant to a large project that he was working on) taught him to look beyond architecture and, instead, to look at how a building works in the environment.

I bring up the earlier, somewhat admiring (or at least ambivalent), quote, however, to point out that Jacobs was not as narrowly dogmatic as many people (not necessarily you, David) often make her out to be. I think what Jacobs was really saying thoughtout her work is, more or less, "Let's look at processes -- and, when we do that, let's not look on with uncritical, unqualified admiration at those trendy things (e.g., superblocks, big plans, "starchitecture," etc.) that also have some very, very strong negatives.

- - - - -

Here's my take (strongly influenced by my interpretation of Jacobs) on Gehry (and the architecture of other starchitects):

1) The buildings, as beautiful as some of them may be as sculpture, are, indeed, usually, anti-urban.

2) But not every building /structure in a city has to be urbane in order for a city or city district to be healthy. Cities, and city districts, that are generally healthy can usually afford A FEW anti-urban buildings HERE AND THERE. Look at some of the other anti-urban buildings that have been built in NYC over the years without "killing" their surroundings: Trinity Church and the Trinity church graveyard (with its one-story (+?) high stone retaining wall); the fanstastic fortress-like armories; St. Patrick's Cathedral (which I like to think of as a 19th Century, Gothic Revival "spaceship" plunked down in mid-Manhattan); "podiumed" and high-walled Beaux Arts buildings like the U.S. Customs House (on NYC's Bowling Green) and the New York Public Library; the original (and in my opinion quite beautiful) Philip Johnson's wall for the Museum of Modern Art; etc.

3) The important thing, however, is to recognize that such structures are, indeed, antiburban and that they shouldn't be allowed to proliferate or be grouped together with nothing else there (e.g., like the very large theaters at Lincoln Center). In other words, that their positives are not unqualified positives and that their anti-urbanism should be ameliorated or tempered (e.g., surrounded, in some cases, by infill, etc.)

4) I also feel, as I believe I mentioned in an earlier thread on Gehry's Disney Hall on the City Comforts website, that I think people (especially architects) tend to confuse urban design with urbanism. In my opinion good urban design can still be bad urbanism (e.g., a cultural center having good urban design is still likely to be anti-urban; and bad (or so-so) urban design can still be great urbanism (e.g., those two large but, "urban design" wise, so-so buildings on Union Square in NYC that are also terrific as urbanism).

# # #

[Robert Haines]

This whole exchange (including those from interested observers) is fascinating, but in my opinion it still unfairly praises Gehry by too faint of damning.

Gehry's architecture has always been contaminated with novelty, but over the past two decades, this novelty has become increasingly retrograde. Anyone familiar with Futurist sculpture (particularly Boccioni) will recognize Gehry's formal antecedent; far from being "new", his forms are a century old, and getting older by the day.

But perhaps a bigger ill is that Gehry has ushered in an era where novelty is allowed to trump function. Where is the function in a building that requires custom carpets, custom furniture, etc., simply to be able to perform as well as its rectilinear equivalent? Where is the functionality in cladding that cannot be repaired or replaced, except through custom fabricators at 5 times the cost of flat panels? Where is the functionality in urban exterior treatments from which it is impossible to efface graffiti? While visiting the Guggenheim Bilbao, I saw the results of this; ugly scars left on the titanium panels.

Finally, I have to marvel at Gehry's almost Orwellian use of double-speak: dismissing a critic as "pompous". What could be more pompous than believing that one is above criticism?!

[AW]

Back belatedly to thank Mr Sucher for his clarification, and to say that I don't mind at all being condescended to, and have now read a little on your site and have a better idea what you meant. I still think that a set of rules that defines "urban" in such a way as not to allow for the existence of, say, Disney Hall, or the Guggenheim Museum, or Lever House, or the Seagram's Building, or (as in Mr Hemric's point #2 above) Trinity Church, the Public Library, the Custom's House at Bowling Green, is a set of rules in need of revision, or possibly in need of scrapping altogether. I haven't walked around the Armory Building up on Park Ave in awhile, but I don't remember any retail penetration at all. It nevertheless is a glorious building, which the city would be poorer without. It would seem to me the case that though blank walls are in general not a great idea, masterpieces that have them are sometimes an excellent idea, and highly urban at least in the general sense of that word, and that a critical posture that defines them out of the conversation is the intellectual equivalent of that moment in the movie "Shallow Hal" where Jason Alexander's character refuses a date with a supermodel who has tickets to a Cream revival concert because her second toe is longer than her big toe. Sometimes maybe you have to acknowledge the presence of values more important than your rules, no?

I find Disney Hall thrilling. I live in downtown New York where any number of buildings have lots of sidewalk life, and they are for the most part decidedly un-thrilling. And I regard the loss of the downtown Guggenheim by Gehry as an immense tragedy.

[David Sucher]

AW.
Please take a look at this post:

http://citycomfortsblog.typepad.com/cities/2003/06/the_default_pos.html

It may clarify things a bit.

[AW]

That clarifies things a bit, in the sense that you admit to exceptions to your rules. The only question then is whether the Disney Hall qualifies as one of those exceptions, and you feel that it does not, and I disagree.

[David Sucher]

And, AW, the magic (and irony) of the 3 Rules is that Disney Hall would have lost nothing of it's charm but gained an enormous urban presence had all it's 4 block frontages (rather than just one) responded to the street

That's the irony. Disney Hall could be a great urban building with very very little modification. Don't you see the importance (negative, as the building was designed) of those 3 missing urban frontages? They reinforce the dead-zone feeling of Disney Hall. It is so simple.

[AW]

You may be right. Unfortunately, though I did walk around the whole building, and the neighborhood, I can't remember the buildings facing Disney Hall on those other three sides well enough to picture those three blocks. It was a couple of years ago, and I was so impressed by the hall that I spent more time looking at it than at what was across the street on those other sides. So I'm in no position to argue and concede the point.

I can imagine circumstances where blank walls would not be a problem, but won't argue further that this is one of them. And it would be interesting to hear Gehry talk about why he left those walls blank, though I'm more sympathetic to his response in Aspen than you and many of your commenters.

[David Sucher]

AW.
You state that "I'm more sympathetic to his response in Aspen than you and many of your commenters."

Were you in Aspen? Did you hear/see Gehry's response? Just curious on what you base your sympathy.

According to Fallows (a Gehry fan, I might add) it was unpleasant.

[AW]

Nope, wasn't there. I was trying to be brief and was unclear. I will now be over-long and perhaps clearer.

I am sympathetic because I love his buildings, and because I can imagine that at age 80, in a venue he didn't particularly care for, he might well not have been much interested in a debate. I might like to see that debate, but so be it -- age has its perks.

And I'm sympathetic because in this battle between Gehry, and the other designers of iconic buildings, and those who deplore them -- you among them, as far as I can tell -- I'm firmly on his side. I've been frustrated, living in NYC for thirty years, at the mediocrity of most of what's been thrown up since the sixties -- the last great buildings seem to me Lever House and the Seagram's building. When Richard Meier designed those condos on West St in the village to much complaint from the neighbors, something changed -- the greedy and aesthetically unambitious developers we seem to be stuck with realized that they could make money by hiring famous architects, and so suddenly the city was awash in work by name architects. Much of it rubbish, by the way. (that monstrosity on St Mark's Place by Gwathmey for example, and I didn't even much like the Meier buildings, though the third wasn't bad). I am starved for some architectural ambition in this city and so am willing to accept a certain amount of crap in order to get some great and inspiring work. I wish we had ten Gehry buildings in New York. I think Atlantic Yards is/was way too big, but the difference between Gehry's arena and the one that will now apparently be built is the difference between Paestum and a dunghill. (Gehry's building isn't Paestum, but the new design is uglier than any dunghill I've ever seen, and I couldn't care less what sort of retail penetration they come up with.)

The day after 9/11 I decided that the one really important response we could make was to build masterpieces where the towers had been. Something on the level of Gehry's Bilbao museum. Something to amaze the world, to say to the gangsters who attacked us "All you can do is destroy -- behold what our great civilization can create!" And of course what followed was bad politics, bad faith, and bad design. This followed what is for me the aesthetic disaster of Battery Park City, where some fool decreed that the most important urban land in North America should be covered with one mediocre brick building after another -- with lots of retail on the streets, but with absolutely nothing of any interest happening anywhere else. It's an immense failure of imagination. Mildly pleasant to walk through, and fairly urban in your sense, I think, but a horrible failure nonetheless.

I vote with genius just about every time. What a great building -- the Doge's Palace, the temples at Paestum, the Parthenon, the Chrysler Building -- can do is to expand our notion of what it is to be human, to be alive on this earth. Disney Hall does that for me. And if you can create Disney Hall, then for me, frankly, you don't have to explain, or argue, or defend.

[David Sucher]

AW, Eloquently put. Thank you.

But I really can't understand what you think I am saying and why we are at odds. From my perspective it is you and Gehry who are creating the issue by opposing iconic buildings versus good walkable urbanism.

Listen carefully to what Kent said. He asked how do we integrate starchitecture and good urbanism? He was explicitly NOT calling for banning iconic buildings -- as if that could be done.
So why all the furor? Why did Gehry get so out-of-proportion upset? Why the resistance? What do you know that I don'? i.e. about iconic buildings and walkable urbanism?

[AW]

I don't actually think we disagree much -- I was trying to allow for your feeling that we do. But I think you're quite right -- there should be a way to integrate walkable urbanism and iconic buildings. Given a great building (for me, Disney Hall), I feel churlish and small picking away at it, and I'm still not sure it would be improved by penetrating those three blank walls (there's something sculptural about the building that would, I think, suffer from that penetration). But it might. And I think it's a good conversation to have.

And, I repeat, so many of the new "iconic" (at least, presumably, to their designers) buildings in NYC these days are such rubbish that I would dearly love to see both better icons and better street life.

I do agree with Gehry that there's something insulting about the term "starchitecture" that makes me wish we'd retire it. It implies that there's nothing going on in those buildings other than the display of peacock feathers, and I don't think that's fair. Every great work in any form represents the assertion of a powerful ego -- but that's not all it represents, or we wouldn't care. It's dismissive, and surely Bilbao, Hadid's Cincinnati Art Museum, Steven Holl's Nelson-Atkins Museum, Tadao Ando's Fort Worth Museum, are, whatever you think about them, very much not dismissable.

But -- peace.

And thanks for the conversation.