Gehry’s Work in the Real World

On display at the Museum of Contemporary Art downtown is an exhibit of the work of Los Angeles architect Frank Gehry, whose idiosyncratic designs have catapulted him to international fame.

The exhibit, mounted by Gehry, includes about 250 drawings, photographs and scale models of his architecture, as well as furniture, furnishings, stage designs and odd pieces of art he has fashioned.

As an illustrative supplement to the exhibit (my review of which will appear Sunday in Calendar), a short tour of Gehry’s projects that have been built locally is very much in order. After all, for the best display of the art of architecture, there is nothing like seeing and experiencing the actual projects.

The projects Gehry has designed over the last two decades cannot be categorized as, say, Post-Modernist, Constructivist or Minimalist, or explained as self-promotion, genius, or simply architectural anxiety . They have been too varied, and their results, as architecture that serves the user and the surrounding community, too mixed.

Gehry’s earlier designs, in which he often used exposed and misshapen raw materials, such as plywood, corrugated sheet metal and chain-link fencing, have been interpreted as inspired attempts to capture the drama of the construction process. They also have been described as bold challenges to accepted architectural “norms,” and brazen statements about the use of the structure and its setting.

Perhaps the most dramatic example of this phase of Gehry’s career was the design of his own house at the southwest corner of Washington Avenue and 22nd Street in Santa Monica. Here, in 1977, he took a modest pink, nondescript, two-story house, exposed portions of the framework and wrapped it all in an expanded shell of odd-angled metal, plywood, glass and chain link.

Collision, Tension

According to Gehry, the design explored the collision of materials, their geometry and their layering to create a tension between the old and new house, not to mention the house and its surroundings. Though the remodel and expansion were completed 10 years ago, the unfinished, raw materials make the house appear that it is still under construction, or deconstruction, an effect the architect says he wanted to achieve.

Other residences Gehry designed in this mode and which can be seen from the street are the Spiller House, a corrugated-metal-sheathed duplex at 39 Horizon Ave., and three attached artist studios at 326 Indiana Ave. Both projects are in Venice and very much at home there.

Each studio in the Indiana Avenue complex is clad in a different material; green asphalt, unpainted plywood and blue stucco, mimicking the tone of the eclectic neighborhood. Check out the windows. Because of some confusion over the survey, site and plans, all the windows that face south were supposed to face north.

Also in Venice, at Ocean Front Walk and 25th Street, is Gehry’s Norton House, a chaotic stack of varied building materials, including logs used as a sun screen. The materials look as if they were washed up onto the beach to form a structure focused on a lifeguard tower. Though the tower does not work particularly well as a study, which it is supposed to be, and blocks part of the view of the ocean from the house, it has become a landmark.

The Norton House represents Gehry’s more recent architectural explorations, in which he breaks down each of his projects into various elements, leaving them to stand seemingly at random, attached or detached, to create a fragmented, sculptural set piece. Different materials are used in some of the projects to further accent the pieces.

Four More Examples

Varied examples include the Cabrillo Maritime Museum, 3730 White Drive in San Pedro; the Frances Howard Goldwyn Library at 1623 Ivar Ave. in Hollywood; the Loyola University Law School, 1441 Olympic Blvd. in Pico Union, and the Aerospace Museum in Exposition Park.

The most successful of the four projects, in my opinion, is Loyola, where the fragmented structures, hinting at a raw classicism, form a modest, street-wise campus. More confused is the Aerospace Museum, where trying to find the main entrance is an adventure. As for the awkwardly sited Cabrillo Museum, I find the excessive use there of chain link fence, a Gehry “trademark,” hostile and not particularly user-friendly.

For an interesting view of a Gehry design under construction, there is the Edgemar, a unusual commercial and retail complex combined with an art museum rising at 2435 Main St., just north of Ocean Park Boulevard in Santa Monica.

Though the design of the building fragments and towers there appear arbitrary, they do attract and hold your attention. In addition, the small piazza they form looks as if it will be just the place to sit and have an espresso. Now that is what I call user-friendly architecture.