Ahhh, shit.

Just wrote a long post explaining the long winded process of site detailing and how it's normally a specific subbie who hands it in for approval.

If Gehry was riding roughshod over his engineers he's a pillock. Helping architects to avoid embarrassing themselves is part of our job.

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"Aid, trade, green technology and peace." - Hans Rosling.
"Market forces are a good servant but a poor master." - Zaune

You do realize this is actually a major part of his creative process? He can spend years crumpling, recrumpling, and rearranging paper and odds and ends until the massing is just so. Then his modeling team makes a 3d scan of the pile, and under his oversight, begins the process of mapping something resembling a building onto the resulting volume, and then figuring out how to build it. He's really more of a mad abstract sculptor than an architect.

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Every day is victory.
No victory is forever.

Yes, which is one of the reasons I hate him so much... He [b]IS[/i] an artist, but there is a difference between putting art ON a building, such as ArtDeco, and making a building, as a whole a work of "Art"

Again, Gehry's "work" would be better shrunk down and put on display in MOMA then with people living it.. I imagine each time he "designs" something, Structural Engineers the world over look at his plans and widdle themselves.

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Praying is another way of doing nothing helpful
"Congratulations, you get a cookie. You almost got a fundamental English word correct." Pick
"Outlaw star has spaceships that punch eachother" Joviwan
Read "Tales From The Crossroads"!
Read "One Wrong Turn"!

I'm all in favor of building as art, but the concerns of making a building a work of art must be greater than the concerns of making a piece of crumpled paper into art, if you have any intention of the building being used and appreciated.

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Every day is victory.
No victory is forever.

That´s quite a general statement. Why would " making a building, as a whole a work of "Art"" necessarily be a bad thing?
Not in this case particularly but in general?

Well in this case, when I use the phase "Making a building a work of art" I am referring more about sculptural and modern art...

If you walk through an art gallery, and see some abstract twisted sculpture, try to imagine it being made into a five story building... That is what Gehry does at heart.

Now other buildings could be "Work of Art". Frank Lloyd Wright and Pablo Solari are two Architects I can think of who design buildings as "Works of Art" However... The design them with the intent of making a building as art... As in:
"Here is a building where people work and live... How can I make it artistic?"
Gehry's approach is the reverse:
"Here is a abstract work of art, how can I turn it into a building where people work and live?"

Does that make sense?

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Praying is another way of doing nothing helpful
"Congratulations, you get a cookie. You almost got a fundamental English word correct." Pick
"Outlaw star has spaceships that punch eachother" Joviwan
Read "Tales From The Crossroads"!
Read "One Wrong Turn"!

You cannot be serious. He actually designs buildings that way? Jesus fuck, I was gonna say someone needs to break his fingers so we don't get inflicted with any more of his buildings, but it looks like we'll have to do some serious amputations to make him stop. Son of a bitch.

Because buildings are supposed to be buildings, where people live and work. They are supposed to stand and work for (preferably) a very long time. Designing one should involve a careful balancing act of function, structural integrity, safety, aesthetics, etc with consideration given to budget, location, history and whatnot of the spot.

Not, you know, taking the crumpled-together meshes of paper some madman made and having actually qualified engineers start from there.

Come on, I am not an architect-nut, but if this is seriously how he designs buildings, he should be kept to making sculptures.

It is perfectly fine to make a building that is primarily a work of art; this has a long tradition, but the key point is that no one is required to use such buildings. Follies historically existed in parks, remote areas or even people's back yards. The problem here is that (a) the buildings are being marketed as highly functional despite this not being a priority in the design and (b) they are taking up (a lot of) highly-demand urban core space, such that practically leaving them unused is not an option.

to be honest, techniques are expanding so fast now, we probably can make almost anything in any shape you ask for.

Hell, i've got some notes next to me right now talking about High Strength DSP concrete, talking about the possibility of 32km high structures.

Small scale structures - like furniture, materials have outclassed the engineering challenges for so long now that nobody thinks twice about a piece of art that doubles as furniture.
When was the last time you looked for a purely functional chair, instead of one that looked really good and was still comfortable to sit on?

Especially for small buildings, function really can come after design now. Stuff closer to the edge of engineering (like long span bridges) are still dictated by form of function first. Skyscrapers lie somewhere in between the two extremes, but we can certainly do stuff now that would have been stupidly impossible a decade ago.

Normally compromises do have to be made, so I don't like the sound of Gehry overriding his engineering team. On the other hand, i've seen a few instances where the architect HAS to override the engineering team, otherwise you end up with nice simple to design and build boxes.

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"Aid, trade, green technology and peace." - Hans Rosling.
"Market forces are a good servant but a poor master." - Zaune

YES! This is exactly correct. I really have nothing wrong with Gehry "In principal". If he had been born 50 or 60 years ago, he would have been considered an 'eccentric' architect and ended up building a few small buildings that would not have caused anyone much harm... Now, we see him being picked to build things that people will HAVE to work and live in for what may be decades. If Gehry stuck to making houses or small little buildings, he wouldn't be "that bad" We could just overlook him.. But the bastard is making massive skyscrapers now... It is ok to make a small three or four story building based on crumpled paper, but not something 40 or 50 stories tall. Especially when he is running rough-shod over the better judgment of his engineers.

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Praying is another way of doing nothing helpful
"Congratulations, you get a cookie. You almost got a fundamental English word correct." Pick
"Outlaw star has spaceships that punch eachother" Joviwan
Read "Tales From The Crossroads"!
Read "One Wrong Turn"!

I assume you mean if he were working 50 or 60 years ago; he's 83 now. The main problem I see is that he's a "star" architect, so people pursue him for his celebrity rather than the appropriateness of his work. As I've said before, some of his designs work spectacularly well, but those seem to be a chance coincidence of his style fitting with the surroundings, as well as him cooperating with his engineers and specialist consultants. Still, I wouldn't want him dominating a skyline.

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Every day is victory.
No victory is forever.

why?
(not to the engineering side, but to the first part of the statement)

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"Aid, trade, green technology and peace." - Hans Rosling.
"Market forces are a good servant but a poor master." - Zaune

Yup, that´s less general and something I can agree with. Making function follow form has a tendency to not work. It´s not like it ALLWAYS fails, though.

The things you discribe in no ways contradict "making a building, as a whole a work of "Art"".
But I really don´t care how Ghery designs his building.
My statement was in a completely different context which I actually explicitly stated.