Frank Gehry as Urbanist?
A Fresh Look at Contextual Design Courtesy of an Unlikely Source
CUDC Quarterly, 1:2 - Winter, 2001

Frank Gehry’s new building in Cleveland is far from completion, but enough of Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management is visible for people to have a sense of its overall shape and its presence in the neighborhood. The inevitable response to it–or at least the most frequent one–is that it doesn’t "fit in" with its surroundings. In a slightly more technical vocabulary, we might say that the building doesn’t seem to respond to its context, that it is anti-contextual.

Undoubtedly new buildings have been greeted with this response forever, but it is particularly sanctioned by the architectural culture of the last few decades. This is true both because of our increasing sensitivity to historic preservation issues since the 1960’s, but also because of ideas associated with postmodernism in architecture. As the critique of modernist architecture evolved in the 70’s, one of its most important themes was that modernist buildings often did violence to their contexts. The postmodernists looked to the past, to high art classicism and premodernist vernaculars, for alternatives to the modernist emphasis on the new and abstract.

By now, most critics, and even many of postmodernism’s protagonists, have been disappointed by the results of this type of thinking. Contextual design can become a trap. Given contemporary building techniques, newly built "old" buildings tend to look pretty unconvincing. The worst examples are greviously lacking the detail and substance of their neighbors, and even many of the best look like their only goal in life is to be inconspicuous. This isn’t too surprising, given a theoretical position that always values the old over the new.

One of the great values of Frank Gehry’s work is that it provides a more dynamic range of responses to the issue of context. At first glance, this might seem a surprising statement. After all, Gehry is currently America’s most famous "signature" architect, a brand name designer hired to provide his style in any circumstance. Unlike some big names, though, Gehry has a history of providing buildings that respond very specifically to their sites. I. M. Pei could design the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for one site and then build it, essentially unaltered, on another, but Gehry has never pulled that sort of stunt.

In this regard, it’s useful to return to Gehry’s work from before the late 80’s, almost all of which is in the Los Angeles area. Here his contextualism is especially apparent because he was working in an environment with which he was intimately familiar. The buildings of this period use the materials and structures of the vernacular in surprising and often illuminating ways. Looking at the the Spiller House in Venice, we realize the extraordinary lightness and expediency of American housing, especially in California. These buildings have a way of giving depth to an urban context which is already motley and incoherent by traditional standards. Working in Southern California, Gehry never had the luxury of choosing which history was sufficiently charming to be imitated. Instead, he always made the best of the materials at hand.

Right: The Spiller House in Venice, CA with a vernacular neighbor.
Left: View from the classroom building to the parking structure (not by Gehry) at the Loyola University Law School in Los Angeles. The bell tower of the chapel is at the right edge.

Gehry’s more recent work is not always quite as specific. The palette of materials is more abstract, particularly the undulating metal surfaces, and one could argue that he is in grave danger of repeating himself these days. Nevertheless, his best work is still surprisingly responsive to context. The sculptural distortion of his forms is seldom truly arbitrary. Rather they are inflected at neighboring buildings and streets. They activate the context and increase our sensitivity in something like the urban equivalent of an immune response.

It’s much too soon to say what success the Weatherhead School will have in "infecting" the already problematic context of University Circle, but as someone who has followed Gehry’s work for a long time, I would urge his critics to give him a chance. He has a surprising way of "fitting in" after all. -- Steve Rugare

Left: The University of Minnesota Art Museum seen from the bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis.
Right: The new building in Cleveland as of October, 2000.