Frank Gehry ‘Always Wanted to Work Big’ : After winning the Disney Hall design competition, he feels his long devotion to L.A. has been rewarded

Frank Gehry’s studio on the upper floor of a Santa Monica warehouse is an amiable jumble of exposed ductwork, cardboard and balsa wood architectural models and overflowing drafting tables. Gehry inhabits a glass-walled inner office furnished with several of his trademark glued brown-paper easy chairs and a fish lamp with Formica chip scales. A short, plump man, rumpled yet intense, the 59-year-old Gehry flashes a frequent, shy grin to discount the depth of his feelings about architecture.

Last week, Gehry was selected as the architect for the $100 million Walt Disney Hall to be built adjacent to the Music Center at 1st Street and Grand Avenue. The hall will serve as the home for the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Question: Let’s start with the obvious question: What was your immediate reaction to winning the Disney Hall commission?

Answer: Total shock!

Q: Why so?

A: All the big new cultural temples--MOCA, the County Museum of Art, the Getty Center in Brentwood--have been given to outsiders to design. Awarding a local guy a major public project like the Disney is a sign of L.A.’s increasing cultural confidence, its willingness to trust the hometown boy. Frankly, this event is more than a little miraculous.

Q: Is there an undercurrent of old hurt under your new delight?

A: Oh, sure. I grew up architecturally here. I understand the place. I know the people. I feel very much part of L.A. That’s why it’s so painful when you get passed over. You feel unloved, like your own family has rejected you.

Q: Why do you think it took so long for the local cultural establishment to accept your architecture?

A: Part of my work is ugly. It holds up a mirror to the city’s reality, which isn’t all roses. It takes a certain sophistication to accept ugliness as a part of the environment, as a clue to its intrinsic nature. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no ugliness snob. Cheap materials--like the chain-link fencing label attached to my name--aren’t something I love to use. Give me the budget and I’ll be as fancy as the next man.

Q: The Disney Hall selection committee said they were looking for a first-rate designer who was ready to do his very best work. Does that apply to you?

A: “Ripe,” was the word they used. I always feel I’m ripe! In the past few years I’ve been lucky to get larger and more generous projects, like skyscrapers in Manhattan, Boston and London. That’s allowed me to work on a larger scale with better materials. I’ve always wanted to work big. You could say that all the little houses I’ve done have been miniature metaphors for cities.

Q: How does the design of Disney Hall fit into the evolution of your kind of architecture?

A: It’s a continuation of ideas I’ve been busy with for years. It has to do with my struggle to make the individual parts of a composition clear, then combine them in a dynamic relationship. Take the analogy of a cocktail party, where everyone--short and tall, male and female, the striking and the conventional--is very much an individual, yet collectively creates a fascinating interaction. I do the same thing in a building--break it down into its component bits then find an energetic way to fit the pieces together again.

Q: How does that method apply to the Disney Hall design?

A: In Disney the two major parts of the composition were obvious--the 2,500-seat concert hall and the foyer. The big hall had to be situated well away from First Street, to play off against the mock-Parthenon facade of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. By creating this distance (between the hall and the Pavilion) we enlarged the foyer into a great glass-roofed conservatory that creates a “city room” along Grand Avenue. As I moved the major pieces around in the working model, the active physical relationships gradually came clear and the shapes became more elegant.

Q: The word “elegant” is not one that’s usually associated with your architecture.

A: For me the bad word is “precious,” which I see as the opposite of true elegance. I look for details that aren’t precious. That’s often been misunderstood in my work, which is perceived as roughly finished and hooked on cheapo materials. If I’m guilty of being rough, it’s that I am aware of the limitations of our local craftsmen and contractors. I feel you have to work with what they can do, and not tear your hair out over their imperfections, especially in L.A.

Q: That sounds a little sad.

A: Oh no, I’m an architectural optimist. I always try to connect with the reality of things, and make the best of it.

Q: Which architects or artists have influenced you most?

A: Brancusi. I have his picture on my desk. Lou Kahn (of Philadelphia). The Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. Artists like Claes Oldenburg, Ed Moses, Billy Al Bengston. One of the deepest influences has been Japan. When I was at USC in the late 1940s many of the professors had just come home from the Pacific war. They’d seen Kyoto and flipped. In the classical Japanese craft and aesthetic there is a willingness to work with the materials at hand, even if they’re just bamboo and paper. And the episodic, unrigid way Japanese tradition organizes objects in space was a revelation to my young mind.

Q: How does this Japanese influence relate to your feelings about Los Angeles?

A: The supple and adaptive Oriental way of being fits the character of Southern California, which is chaotic, yet energetic, like a Mack truck rolling full speed down a freeway. You either let it crush you, or you jump aboard and hope to ride to glory.

Q: Are you always so full of bounce?

A: I wish. I tend to look for things to worry about, like my aging mother’s health or the well-being of my young sons Alejo and Sammy. My boys are my passion and my recreation, I just delight in them. Every spare moment I get from working or flying to appointments on the East Coast, Japan or Europe I spend at home. Right now the boys are helping me design the interiors of a chain of small L.A. sandwich shops I’ve been commissioned to do. Alejo’s dreamed up this great robot feature, and Sammy did drawings. My (wife) Berta is a rock for me, she jollies me along, endures my shtick, lifts me up when I’m down. She looks after the office finances, which would otherwise be a mess.

Q: Do you make a decent living as an architect?

A: Barely. Good design swallows up the hours, which consume the profits. I’m ecstatic when I end the year breaking even. It’s a worry. Fear of financial insecurity is bred into my bones, maybe because I’m a child of the Great 1930s Depression. My dad was poor in Toronto, where I was born, and moved the family to L.A. in search of a better life when I was 17. We lived in a near-slum close to downtown. Such childhood miseries leave a mark.

Q: Who are your friends?

A: It used to be mainly artists, but in recent years I’ve spent more time with other architects. This never happened before. I felt like an outsider. Maybe I was just too competitive--some stupid reason like that. Now I especially enjoy the younger guys, like Mike Rotondi and Frank Israel.

Q: Why have you been such a major influence on the younger generation of designers in L.A. and elsewhere?

A: I don’t see my influence on younger architects--but they do! Maybe it’s a blind spot. My own work seems so personal, so intuitive, and so different from theirs. I fear giving birth to a new vocabulary of design cliches. That’s the mark of a mediocre talent.

Q: Will you ever stop working, rest on your laurels?

A: Never. I’m hooked on architecture, with all its great disappointments and delights. Especially the delights.