McMonkeyman's Profile

Sure, you can say his designs look "cool". What people don't realize is how wasteful and costly his designs are. There is a reason his designs are "innovative" and "unique" - because no one in their right mind or with a conscience would create such excessive monstrosities. I watched in dismay and disgust at the construction of his Walt Disney Concert Hall from my office window here in downtown LA. It sat for 3-4 years as an empty lot because they ran out of money before a single beam of the Hall was constructed. The city and County of LA had already blown too much money on it so they had to ask around (again!) for more private money to finish. It eventually came in costing almost $300 million and about $174 million over-budget, and this figure does NOT include the original extras for such design and construction, a re-design, and does not include the unanticipated extra maintenance and repairs needed for water leakage, drainage, and fixing the reflection, heat and light problems encountered. On a sunny day I could get a sunburn standing no more than 5 minutes in front of it. I'm serious. And one pair of sunglasses is not enough. One of the most rudimentary elements of architectural design is to plan and design for heat and light gain, especially in a dense urban environment, and they couldn't even get THAT right. If you lived in an apartment to the west or south of Disney Hall, your AC bills tripled due to the heat gain. Drivers were temporarily blinded, especially going by the concave sections which were basically parabolic mirrors. Any 10 year old who's used a magnifying glass and/or handheld mirror can figure this out. It was funny watching the tourists trying to find a good spot to snap a photo of the bldg, walking with one arm over their face to prevent from being temporarily blinded. To alleviate this problem Gehry's associates had to come back and intentionally dull the surfaces. Embarassing.
Gehry's modus operandi is to disallow intervention to his design from politicians, businessmen and economists. He wants to let the "artist" handle everything. Though I understand the advantages to let him run the show, he certainly needs someone to bring him back to reality.
To put the cost into perspective, other similar-sized concert halls cost about 5-20% of this one. To put it another way, my volunteer group can build a 3-room schoolhouse in a 3rd world country for $12,000 (let's use $15,000 to say we did it with all paid labor). WITH JUST THE COST OF THE BUDGET OVERRUNS ON THIS PROJECT, we can build 11,600 of those schools, EACH with ability to educate 100 students. I think you understand why I am disgusted.
I've been to his EMP in Seattle, and I've been to the Disney Hall to see a few concerts, and it is indeed a great venue. But I won't respect or commend Gehry until I see him do something like design and complete the 50,000 schools for that money instead of one showy, bloated, wasteful, dumb, and - in my opinion - FUGLY building.