My God, a whole lotta stuff to blog about. First thing:
In the New Yorker, there is an amusing tidbit about tee-shirts saying "Fuck Frank Gehry" that Gehry himself likes and buys to give to friends. What caught my eye was this line:
“Yeah,” [Gehry] said, “because as I’ve gotten to be pretty well known there’s a lot of negative stuff written, right? People potshot at you. So I sort of ignore it. You know, when Bilbao was presented publicly, there was a candlelight vigil against me.” He let out a rueful laugh. “And then there was a thing in a Spanish paper saying, ‘Kill the American Architect.’ That was scary..."
When one is a child, does one imagine a candlelight vigil being held against you when you grow up? Who has such passion against architecture? Apparently we do. When Jasper O'Farrell designed Market Street here in San Francisco, he was almost lynched. I pulled this next quotation off of Wikipedia, but I have read it before in other histories of S. F. so I can vouch for its veracity. It comes from a book called Forgotten Pioneers by T.F. Pendergast:
"When the engineer had completed his map of Market Street and the southern part of the city, what was regarded as the abnormal width of the proposed street excited part of the populace, and an indignation meeting was held to protest against the plan as wanton disregard for rights of landowners; and the mob, for such it was, decided for lynch law. A friend warned O'Farrell, before the crowd had dispersed. He rode with all haste to North Beach, took a boat for Sausalito, and thence put distance behind him on fast horses in relay until he reached his retreat in Sonoma. He found it discreet to remain some time in the country before venturing to return to the city."
Ooh, tough crowd. The Transamerica Building is iconic. It's hard to think of downtown S.F. without its pointy little head, but even the great Herb Caen was against it...until he got used to it. We all have to share this space here on earth, so you better not ruffle feathers. But in not ruffling you have some pretty lame architecture. The square boxes of glass and concrete, the international style, is everywhere. I suppose it is cheap and easy and stable but so very dull. When the Art Deco buildings peek out from beneath the behemoth skyscrapers, they resemble Cinderella, outshining her ugly stepsisters. So I wish we had more weird Gehry type of buildings. Same old argument I guess: More beauty please, even if it is weird beauty.
In the New Yorker, there is an amusing tidbit about tee-shirts saying "Fuck Frank Gehry" that Gehry himself likes and buys to give to friends. What caught my eye was this line:
“Yeah,” [Gehry] said, “because as I’ve gotten to be pretty well known there’s a lot of negative stuff written, right? People potshot at you. So I sort of ignore it. You know, when Bilbao was presented publicly, there was a candlelight vigil against me.” He let out a rueful laugh. “And then there was a thing in a Spanish paper saying, ‘Kill the American Architect.’ That was scary..."
When one is a child, does one imagine a candlelight vigil being held against you when you grow up? Who has such passion against architecture? Apparently we do. When Jasper O'Farrell designed Market Street here in San Francisco, he was almost lynched. I pulled this next quotation off of Wikipedia, but I have read it before in other histories of S. F. so I can vouch for its veracity. It comes from a book called Forgotten Pioneers by T.F. Pendergast:
"When the engineer had completed his map of Market Street and the southern part of the city, what was regarded as the abnormal width of the proposed street excited part of the populace, and an indignation meeting was held to protest against the plan as wanton disregard for rights of landowners; and the mob, for such it was, decided for lynch law. A friend warned O'Farrell, before the crowd had dispersed. He rode with all haste to North Beach, took a boat for Sausalito, and thence put distance behind him on fast horses in relay until he reached his retreat in Sonoma. He found it discreet to remain some time in the country before venturing to return to the city."
Ooh, tough crowd. The Transamerica Building is iconic. It's hard to think of downtown S.F. without its pointy little head, but even the great Herb Caen was against it...until he got used to it. We all have to share this space here on earth, so you better not ruffle feathers. But in not ruffling you have some pretty lame architecture. The square boxes of glass and concrete, the international style, is everywhere. I suppose it is cheap and easy and stable but so very dull. When the Art Deco buildings peek out from beneath the behemoth skyscrapers, they resemble Cinderella, outshining her ugly stepsisters. So I wish we had more weird Gehry type of buildings. Same old argument I guess: More beauty please, even if it is weird beauty.
No comments:
Post a Comment