The Gehry in the Machine

I recently attended a lecture at the Minneapolis Public Library concerning Frank Gehry’s design methodology, and it sparked some questions for me concerning architectural models, paradigms, and the primacy of artistic creation. The lecture detailed the shift in Frank Gehry’s approach to construction, since discovering the architectural potential of some computer software originally designed with aerospace engineering in mind. I’ll oversimplify things here for the sake of brevity and argument, but hopefully some questions will begin to make sense. Gehry’s design process famously relies on transposing from very abstract models. Because the models are so geometrically irregular, the transposition has been extraordinarily complicated. This may have been most particularly the case with the Weisman Museum at the University of Minnesota. As it was suggested at the lecture, the Weisman was in some sense the last of hand drawn buildings. Beginning with the Guggenheim Bilbao, and more explicitly with the Experience Music Project in Seattle, Gehry and his firm realized that they could utilize new software to translate all the abstraction into hard numbers. This made the whole process tremendously more efficient, saving huge amounts of time and money. After the Weisman, the traditional paper and pencil were no longer necessary – the abstract model could be scanned directly into a virtual representation of itself, complete with the necessary numbers. So, the argument in favor of the process might go something like this: the EMP is much more structurally complicated than the Weisman, but was realized more efficiently. Leaving behind the pencil and paper provides two important benefits: a more complicated design and a cheaper price tag.

But, is it fair to ask whether any downside accompanies these benefits? My question concerns the aesthetic differences that accompany the gradual shift toward greater control. The EMP has a very different aesthetic appeal (while at the same time being very clearly a work by Gehry). It looks much more sleek, more refined, more “produced” (and, indeed, it is all of these things). With the Weisman, it is much more evident that there is a gap between the abstract model and its transposition into a built structure (though, this gap might be something desirable). The geometries are more rigid (more straight lines, less, swooping and diving curves, for instance). An analogy was made with the master builders of the Medieval cathedrals. The tradition of the master builder is one of (not quite) complete control – overseeing all facets of the building process, controlling the transition from the drawing room floor to the built walls. Gehry’s new process brings him closer to the tradition of the master builder. With the Weisman, a tremendous amount of work was left to contractors, out of a matter of necessity due to the complexity of the designs. The virtualization of the design process returns control, both to the architect and, just as importantly, to the model itself.

But does the greater control of the construction process lead to an aesthetically preferable result? To put it bluntly, is it worth it? It would be too much to characterize it as a Faustian bargain, but nevertheless, one might ask whether the greater increase of efficiency leaves something to be desired. One of the more celebrated and appealing characteristics of Medieval cathedrals is their indeterminacies – those architectural moments which fall outside of the master builder’s plan – stonemason’s signatures, unique gargoyles, and other irregularities. What do we look for in a complete building – a direct translation form a model, or perhaps an indirect one.

How closely should a work of architecture resemble its paradigm? To the extent that a work becomes a more repeatable duplicate of its model, then we might look at the building itself as a “duplicate’, a copy. In just this sense I’ve used the word transpose to refer to the process of proceeding from the model to the building. But a transposition, of course, means that two things shift places. Is there not normally a shift in primacy from the model to the building, once construction is complete? If for Gehry, the primary work is the model, then by all means it makes sense to try to duplicate that model as precisely as possible. But then what can we say about the building? Is it secondary to the model (and we might here be reminded of the trend of museums paying millions for architects’ collections of renderings, models, and other artifacts once thought to be mere secondary ephemera).

In other forms of art, we ridicule anything judged to be over-produced. Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and Ashley Simpson are just a few of the obvious musical examples. Lucas basically ruined his Star Wars franchise with an overreliance on CGI, i.e. Jar-Jar Binks. Likewise, we might scoff at Thomas Kincade’s art empire or even a fast food meal for not just being generally bad, but for being produced too closely to a formula. I admit that I’m being at least a little unfair here – any of Gehry’s works are of far greater aesthetic significance than a McDonald’s burger, and I don’t mean to put the two on the same level. Frankly, Seattle’s EMP really is pretty cool, even if something was lost in the transposition. But we might still ask about the virtue of live performance, even in architecture.