Luma
This is the only one of Frank Gehry’s buildings that I’ve ever been in. It’s the Luma Centre in Arles. We were there on an unusually grey and damp day in 2024, and yet the building, with the wonderful internal spiral chutes, really lifted our spirits.
Quote of the Day
”Did you know that Mozart had no arms and no legs? I’ve seen statues of him on people’s pianos.”
- Viktor Borge
An alternative to the morning’s radio news
John Field | Nocturne No. 9 in E Minor, H. 46 | Alice Sara Ott
A little gem.
Long Read of the Day
The Creative Intuition of Frank Gehry
Transcript of an interesting conversation between the architect and Nathan Gardels of Noema magazine.
Sample:
Like others who think differently and come from outside the insider establishment, he rebelled against the custodians of proper and hallowed ways.
This was most evident in his early days through the deconstruction of his own staid Dutch colonial-style home in Santa Monica, whose façade he disrupted with jutting angles of glass, corrugated metal, plywood and chain-link fence. It was not pretty. But, as fellow architect Thom Mayne has commented, the use of inexpensive everyday materials in a city where properties easily go for $20 million was a critical statement about the house as a status symbol. Mayne thought the house was “very aggressive politically … using chain link is saying fuck you to marble.”
Living in Los Angeles, I crossed paths with Gehry several times over the years, including in some formal conversations for New Perspectives Quarterly, the journal I edited. We met for lunch once in the late 1990s to discuss the formidable roadblocks to getting the Disney Hall built.
Gehry drew one of his famous scribbled sketches on a restaurant napkin and told me his original idea was to sheath the building in stone, not metal, which created construction impediments. He railed against the aesthetic judgment of some members of the board overseeing the design, who were threatening to block funding. He seemed so convinced the project would never see the light of day that I threw away what would now be an immensely valuable sketch!
Remarkable man.
Books, etc.
I bought this years ago for £1 and over the years it was submerged under a pile of books. I came on it the other day while searching for something else and started to read his essay on Machiavelli and, well, you know what happened. Think of it as how to lose an entire afternoon.
Feedback
Euan Williamson reminded me that the only Frank Gehry building in the UK is Maggie’s Cancer Support Centre in Dundee. There’s a nice Sky TV news clip about it is here.
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