Friday, June 15, 2012

Gehry House, Santa Monica, California, 1977-8

Gehry is perhaps best known for his curvy, metalic wave-form museums in Bilbao, Seattle, Los Angeles and Minneapolis, but it all started with strange impulses applied to his own traditional little Santa Monica house in the late 1970s. 

Frank Gehry’s house in Santa Monica came before its time as a harbinger of the Deconstructivist movement. The first recognizedpublic Deconconstructivist architectural project came almost a decade later. Gehry took his seemingly ordinary house in Santa Monica and began changing things incredibly strange ways. He took a step beyond the playful reworkings of Postmodern architecture, where traditional design symbols were reinterpreted, and instead starting using materials and strategies few applied to architectural projects. 

Gehry started by tearing the drywall off of interior walls to expose structural studs buried in the old house, then subtracted and added architectural elements seemingly without a coherent plan throughout the building. He added chain link and plywood to the exterior. His iterative transformations were responses to various impulses and were allowed to coexist without a clear rhyme or reason, flying in the face of both Modernism and Postmodernism – designs from which were typically justified in terms of some kind of central concept.
      
Since this small house came into being, the idea of deconstructing traditional elements and reassembling them according to obscure and abstract comments has become the norm in the industry, particularly for major public buildings. Gehry’s subsequent work (shown above) took this to new levels each time. World architects like Daniel Libeskind, Rem Koolhaas, Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid, Coop Himmelblau, and Bernard Tschumi have all created critical works in the subsequent decades that have been influenced by Gehry’s little house. There is considerable controversy surrounding his work and the current state of Deconstructivism, though the influence of Gehry’s approach to design is unquestionably felt throughout the practice of global architecture today. 

So in order to understand where deconstructivism begun, we have choosen GehryHouse in Santa Monica. We thought that identifying this building will be helpful for understanding deconstructivism movement. 

The story starts when his wife, Berta, bought a small pink bungalow in a bourgeois neighbourhood. Gehry decided to redesign what he considered "a dumb little house with charm", to build around it and try "to make it more important".  

While doing this Frank Gehry  keep the existing house in style not in traditional way. Dutch colonies left their ancient homes and built new houses around them.The old style houses are replaced with new modern ones in the process that the walls were robbed and holes were done with demolishing and removing.The neighbours did’t like it but this cannot change the fact that this new style is involved in and identified with architecture.
“Gehry’s design wrapped around three sides of the old house on the ground floor, extending the house towards the street and leaving the exterior of the existing home almost untouched. “ The steps leading to the front door as if they have been casually thrown on top of each other. 

(first and second floor plan)
Both two levels of the interior has changed a lot.In order to reveal the   framing,joistes and wood studs, some places of houses are stripped and with the appearance of the both old and new elements they are repaired.It was very significant in the house while passing through the rooms that from the old ancient doors originally staying, to the new ones which was designed and placed by Gehry.
Plywood walls crash with brute force into some “unfortunately” skewed  corrugated iron sheets. In order to peaking the building, a large glass cube pushes into the roof of the kitchen, penetrates the side facade which can be seen at the pictures. There isn’t any attempt  to connect the new shell of the house with its old internal core. Gehry House denied the harmony of a finished composition. It gives the impression that the house is under construction. 


In 1991 due to the Gehry family’s growth which involved two boys, the house had to be expanded. Even though Gehry tried to maintain the same style of the house, allowing the original design to determine that of the addition, the house went through significant changes. The residence became much more “finished” which in turn stirred up the angry voices of those who felt strongly about the original raw deconstructivist aesthetics. Nonetheless the Gehry House is still a classic among California’s architectural works.






“I loved the idea of leaving the house intact… I came up with the idea of building the new house around it. We were told there were ghosts in the house… I decided they were ghosts of Cubism. The windows… I wanted to make them look like they were crawling out of this thing. At night, because this glass is tipped it mirrors the light in… So when you’re sitting at this table you see all these cars going by, you see the moon in the wrong place… the moon is over there but it reflects here… and you think it’s up there and you don’t know where the hell you are.” – Frank Gehry

(axonometric drawing)

(details of elevation from inside yard, 1977-8
pencil and colur pencil on tracing paper)

(upper-level plan,1977-8
pencil and colour pencil on tracing paper)

(sections and construction details,1977-8
pencil on tracing paper)

(kitchen skylight construction details 1977-8
pencil on tracing paper)
“In advanced societies, mass production means that we are surrounded by smoothly perfect and anonymus objects. Gehry makes a conscious effort to resist this perfection, with his improvised technique and rough handiwork with hammer, wood and wire. In this way, he succeeds in giving architecture a new meaning- even if it is only that near-failure, the imperfect. By smashing the finished whole, he gains room for play.”
     


REFERENCES


Klotz H.(1989). 20th Century Architecture drawings-models-furniture London, Academy Editions, pp 312-5
Friedman M., Lavin S.(2009).  Frank Gehry: the houses Rizzoli, pp 50
Isenberg B. (2009). Conversations with Frank Gehry.
http://www.archdaily.com/67321/gehry-residence-frank-gehry/
http://weburbanist.com/2008/02/03/the-house-that-shaped-an-architectural-generation-frank
gehrys-first-deconstructivist-building/

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Frank Owen Gehry (1929 - ...)

as an ID card :))

born Feb 28, 1929 Toronto, Ontario, Canada
nationality Canadian - American
alma mater University of Southern California
awards AIA Gold Medal, National Medal of Arts, Order of Canada, Pritzker Prize
work practice Gehry Partners, LLP
buildings Guggenheim Museum, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Gehry Residence, Weisman Art Museum, Dancing House, Art Gallery of Ontario, EMP/SFM, Cinémathèque française, 8 Spruce Street, Ohr-O'Keefe Museum Of Art



in details..

Guggenheim Museum (1997, Bilbao)

Walt Disney Concert Hall (2003, Los Angeles)
Gehry Residence (1978, Santa Monica)
Weisman Art Museum (1993, Minnesota)
Dancing House (1996, Prague)
Art Gallery of Ontario (2008, Toronto)
EMP/SFM (2000, Seattle)
La Cinematheque Francaise (2005, Paris)
Beekman Tower (2011, 8 Spruce Street)
Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art (2010?, Alabama)












Tuesday, June 12, 2012

DECONSTRUCTIVISM

Began in late 1980s, deconstruction addresses concepts in thinking to show how these rely on deeply-entrenched binary oppositions and it works by suspending the congruence between the two. Peter Eisenman believes that it is necessary for architecture to become distant from the strictness and appreciate structure of the logical contrarieties like the traditional contrariety between structure and decoration, abstraction and figuration, figure and ground. Considering these groups, architecture could start a discovery of the between.

While doing it, Deconstruction generates an intricacy at that utilizes the strategy of difference helping the differentiation of the meaning. It may be seen that Deconstruction defers and eludes a description regarding itself, in purpose of not showing itself. It brings continuous questions and spreads through a critique. Hence, architects have adopted the practices of Deconstruction to question the concepts of housing.

Deconstructivism was inspired by another architectural movement, namely, Constructivism which evolved in Russia at the beginning of the century. In fact, many present works that are rooted in earlier, moves in this way. But 1988 was a historic year in its acquiescence in architecture. It started with the Academy Forum at London’s Tate Gallery with the publication of an issue of Architectural Design, and followed by the Deconstructivist Architecture exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, which caused more controversy and argument about the choice of work and even the term ‘Deconstructivist’.

The practice of Deconstruction in the visual arts results in a further reappraisal of value structures. Deconstructionist art motivates the spectator to get involved in the analysis of the ‘between’ and searches out the possibilities of the frame. Jacques Derrida, in his book The Truth in Painting, has pointed out the importance of this concept: ‘One space needs to be broached in order to give place to the truth in painting. Neither inside nor outside, it spaces itself without letting itself be framed but it does not stand outside the frame. It works the frame, makes it work, gives it work to do...’

Deconstruction, both in architecture and the visual arts, still exists even though it is in its early phases and the imagery it uses is fresh and appeals to a new generation. However as Derrida pointed out about architecture in his discussion with Christopher Norris: ‘you can’t, (or you shouldn’t) simply dismiss those values of dwelling, beauty, functionality, and so on. You have to construct, so to speak, a new space and a new form, to shape a new way of building in which these motifs or values are reinscribed, having meanwhile lost their external hegemony.’

Deconstruction does not rigidly separate a framework. Its critique is consistent and it will be important to be aware of that Deconstruction is above all an activity, an open ended practice, not a method persuaded of its own correct reasoning.

Reference


Cooke, C., Benjamin, A., & Papadakis, A. (1989). Deconstruction: Omnibus volume. London, Academy Editions, pp. 7.

Monday, June 11, 2012

a brief (!) info

Before we start, I find it beneficial to give a background information about each of the groups.

C. I. A. M. (1928 - 1956)

André Lurçat est avec Le Corbusier l’un des deux grands théoriciens du mouvement moderne.
founded at the Chateau de la Sarraz in Switzerland, by a group of 28 European architects organized by Le Corbusier, Hélène de Mandrot (owner of the castle), and Sigfried Giedion (the first secretary-general).

other founders: Karl Moser, Hendrik Berlage, Victor Bourgeois, Pierre Chareau, Sven Markelius, Josef Frank, Gabriel Guevrekian, Max Ernst Haefeli, Hugo Häring, Arnold Höchel, Huib Hoste, Pierre Jeanneret, André Lurçat, Ernst May, Fernando García Mercadal, Hannes Meyer, Werner M. Moser, Carlo Enrico Rava, Gerrit Rietveld, Alberto Sartoris, Hans Schmidt, Mart Stam, Rudolf Steiger, Szymon Syrkus, Henri-Robert Von der Mühll, Juan de Zavala.
USSR delegates: El Lissitzky, Nikolai Kolli, Moisei Ginzburg.
later members: Alvar Aalto, Uno Åhrén, Louis Herman De Koninck, Fred Forbát.
  • Architecture could not exist unaffected by economic and social conditions.
    It could not be isolated from governments an politics.
  • Achieving quality in architecture depended on the rationalized production methods of the industrialized world.
TEAM 10 "TEAM X" (1953 - 1981)

Team 10 at the Free University, Berlin, 1973.
From left to right: Peter Smithson, Ungers, Schiedhelm, De Carlo, Van Eyck and Sia Bakema.
Photograph by Jeffrey Schere.
founded at the 9th Congress of C.I.A.M and created a schism within CIAM by challenging its doctrinaire approach to urbanism (July 1953). 

core family members: Jaap Bakema, Georges Candilis, Giancarlo De Carlo, Aldo van Eyck, Alison and Peter Smithson, Shadrach Woods.
others: José Coderch, Ralph Erskine, Pancho Guedes, Rolf Gutmann, Geir Grung, Oskar Hansen, Reima Pietilä, Charles Polonyi, Brian Richards, Jerzy Soltan, Oswald Mathias Ungers, John Voelcker, Stefan Wewerka. 

"a small family group of architects who have sought each other out because each has found the help of the others necessary to the development and understanding of their own individual work."


EXPERIMENTAL ARCHITECTURE (1960 - 1978)

development of conceptual projects challenging conventional and consolidated practices
to explore original paths of thought and develop innovative design tools & methodologies

ARCHIGRAM (1961 - 1974)


JAPANESE METABOLISTS (1960)

Moshe Safdie's Habitat 67 (Montreal, Canada)

CEDRIC PRICE (1960)


SUPERSTUDIO (1966 - 1978)


HAUS-RUCKER CO. (1967)

COOP HIMMELBLAU (1968)


CRITICAL REGIONALISM

an approach to architecture that strives to counter placelessness and lack of identity in Modern Architecture by using the building's geographical context. The term Critical Regionalism was first used by the architectural theorists Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre and, with a slightly different meaning, by the historian-theorist Kenneth Frampton.

DECONSTRUCTIVISM

The projects in this exhibition mark a different sensibility, one in which the dream of pure form has been disturbed. It is the ability to disturb our thinking about form that makes these projects deconstructive. The show examines an episode, a point of intersection between several architects where each constructs an unsettling building by exploiting the hidden potential of modernism. 

Phillip Johnson and Mark Wigley, excerpt from the MoMA Deconstructivist Architecture catalog

PARAMETRIC DESIGN & FABRICATION