Cities, slums and 'The Sketches of Frank Gehry.'
By Dorothy Woodend
Published: June 9, 2006
If cities are the future, then now is the moment to ask some important
questions about the future of cities.
The World Urban Forum runs June 19 - 23, in the fair city of Vancouver.
The thinkers and the talkers will be hard at work, posing questions
about sustainability and design and envisioning new urbanities.
Particularly relevant to those discussions will be contributions from
architects, who have the responsibility for shaping those cities.
But, as Bob Geldof says in the new documentary, The Sketches of Frank
Gehry, architects have a lot to answer for. No wonder architects all
seem to be in long-term therapy. To paraphrase Geldof paraphrasing
Evelyn Waugh, "If one meets an architect at a party, one's first duty
should be to slap them."
And indeed, a slap in the face of straight edges everywhere is the work
of Gehry, who does to steel and aluminum what someone else might do to a
crumpled piece of paper. There is beauty in chaos, but there is also
ugliness, and as some of the people interviewed in the film note, many
of Gehry's designs are extraordinarily ugly.
cont'd....
http://thetyee.ca/Entertainment/2006/06/09/Architect/