Maybe Frank Gehry should come to Richmond and build more iconically bad public spaces.
The aging architect, famous for creating massive public statements, gave birth to a whole new statement when he dismissed the Project for Public Space's Fred Kent at the Aspen Ideas Festival recently. The minor dismissal gained legs when The Atlantic's James Fallows blogged about it -- suddenly, Gehry, Kent and dozens of others were engaged in a heated exchange about ideas and the notion of great architecture.
Jay Wallsjasper captures the great debate on the PPS blog:
When PPS president Fred Kent, a speaker at the Festival two years ago, posed a question to Gehry in the Q-and-A following Gehry’s presentation, the world-famous architect refused to answer.
When Kent repeated the question about why iconic architecture so often fails to create good public places, Gehry called him “pompous” and waved his hand in a gesture that eminent political journalist James Fallows described as “a dismissive gesture, much as Louis XIV might have used to wave away some offending underling.” Fallows described the scene in his influential blog for The Atlantic.
And Fallows’ blog became the place where ideas about what constitutes great architecture were debated. This was because Gehry refused to engage in discussion about his work, even at an event billed as a Festival of Ideas.
I particularly enjoyed this nuggest from Kent's response in Fallows' blog:
“Around the world citizens are defining their future by focusing on their city’s civic assets, authentic qualities and compelling destinations,” Kent continued, “not on blindly following the latest international fads conjured by starchitects.”
As many of the comments at the PPS blog note, Kent doesn't do himself or PPR favors by turning this valid debate into a pissing match but whenever debates like this surface my mind usually wanders down the streets of Richmond.
As much as any city, Richmond has built around and plowed under many of its great spaces and iconic architecture -- Hey, Michael Rao, check out that West Hospital! I always wonder what Richmond would become if it embraced its architecture, its grid, its river.
Then I get disappointed by the next project that turns the corner and ignores the street.
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