There'll be a Frank Gehry building in Washington

[fabrisse]

I'm beginning to think he's stalking me.

Seriously, I make a couple of friends who work at MIT, and the next thing you know, Stata Center. I have to move to LA to be with my family, Disney Hall. The Professor gets a job at Bard; suddenly, Gehry's doing their Arts Center. I visit Las Vegas just once, and now he's built something there, too.

I've had nightmares about being forced to live in Gehry buildings. The first time I went to Disney Hall, I had the unsettling experience of being pulled back from a plate glass window by my mother. Mr. Gehry decided that EXIT signs with backs to them wouldn't look right, so the exit sign reflected directly into a plate glass window. With the reversal of a back, it looked like the exit was through the window.

Anyway, I know this parcel of land. I know the buildings that are currently on it are far from inspired, but it's still a really bad idea. Plus, four acres for Eisenhower? Seriously? I thought that's what Presidential libraries were for.

[/making it all about me]

Comments

[bibliothekara.livejournal.com]

I have to commute past his abomination of a science library two times every day. (It is especially fun when I have to direct newbies to it. "Erm. It's the thing that looks like a biological version of a collapsed house of cards." Hah.)

Suffice to say, I feel yer pain.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

Where's your abomination? Is that the Vegas one that looks like it melted?

[bibliothekara.livejournal.com]

Somewhat. It's the Peter Lewis Science Library, on Washington Road in Princeton, NJ. AKA, across from Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital on House. Qui est actually Frist Campus Center.

(And Lewis has apparently absorbed all the science libraries. Which I do not approve of.)

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

It's better than Stata. That's truly damning with faint praise, I know.

[daylyn.livejournal.com]

I usually work across the street from Disney Hall. It looks like crumpled up aluminum foil. And the heat it gives off when the sun strikes it! (which is all the damn time in L.A., after all). You feel like you're roasting when you walk past the place.

Gehry's work is definitely not high on my list of favorite architect styles.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

On the Bard building he left the metal untreated so it would rust to blend in with its surroundings. *shakes head*

I know switching where the shiny metal was at the last minute on Disney Hall left the city open for a lawsuit from that poor woman whose apartment registered well over 125F. The move meant the sun reflected in on her apartment and turned it into an oven. Gehry just thought it was more artistically pleasing to move it and didn't bother to run any checks.