PBS' The News Hour did a piece this evening on the Disney Concert Hall
in Los Angeles. The usual hype, an interview with a serious-looking
Frank Gehry, a banale interview with the director of the center, and a
'bum rap' by Sam Hall Kaplan (no relation). Remarkable, though, was the
short (one minute?) time-lapse film of the construction of the
building.
* agree the time-lapse was interesting, (though they seemed
to have shifted the camera into a new position at one point,
or backed up the shot to get more of the building in the photo).
* odd that Gehry would say that his work is about chaos, and
it (is about/reflects/not sure the wording he used) somehow is
related to our current form of society, government, _democratic
_or_not, (democracy or whatever this is). cough! cough cough!!
when viewing the building (no windows) as they presented it,
it looks very much like the politics of isolation and isolation, in
any world city, with a counterpoint building by a signature style.
sure looks interesting inside, yet the sharp inside-outside feeling
in the scale, what one sees as this wavy metal contortion rising
in the central city, is liked a closed box that has been warped yet
is still a closed box (except for what appeared as a glass entry).
the show ended with the director (who funded, and got famed)
of the new construction defending the idea of elitism, to justify
such greatness, and that many kinds of people can be included.
maybe so, but the ambiguity between politics and architecture,
the case that Sam K. made for the 250 million doing things for
the rest of the everyday city, to revive its core and cultures, and
to then to compare this with one massive undertaking for a very
few of the majority of citizens, is, well, interesting to consider.
it is wondered if this is not a democracy, it then really does not
much matter for the architecture, it is about chaos and sailboat
sails (Sidney Opera reference) and change. what if it is change
for the worse, in ways? that does not seem to be questioned,
or a question, even. that is why this architecture is 20th century,
driven by a simple modernist ideology based on form making.
brian
bc microsite
http://www.electronetwork.org/bc/
~e-list
http://www.electronetwork.org/list/
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