no, it looks like it crawled out of his ass and died...

they all look the same.

Another candidate for the Overrated Hall of Fame.

That would be a pretty cool Elementary School.

Yeah but have you seen his beach house to end all beach houses?

yeah and it'll look right at home on the princeton campus.

my friend and i just drove past that today and thought 'what the hell is that doing on the campus, and what will it be for?' #4 is right, it certainly won't fit w/ most of the building on campus, but at least it is interesting-looking.

too bad we are still waiting around for CM post that is worth something...

ddv

No Charles, it doesn't.

It looks like something that might have collided over Corona, California, hit a Chevy dealership, and died.

it kind of looks like a fish that came up and died on red square at uw.

It's shiny, check.
It's steel colored, check.
It's trapezoidal, check.
It has big blank walls, check.
The pieces of it don't fit together or look like a "building," check.
The Golden Mean is nowhere to be found, there is no clear "entrance" and there is no symmetry, check.

Therefore, voila! It's a work of genius!

This will soon displace UVa rotunda/quad as the no. 1 example of university architecture in the USA.
We will all buy the framed print and put it over the mantelpiece.

Movies will be filmed in front of it; it will inspire a whole genre that is copied around the world.

Just like that Bilbao museum, the EMP, and our own Central Library.

do i detect hints of rigor & tectonics?

not frank et al's worst.

not as bad as this, either:
http://kunstler.com/eyesore.html

The warming aspect of brick -- and so much of it -- is an interesting change from the usual Gehry work. And I LOVE that shot of the all-brick, skewed massing.

But I'm no fan of that banding that runs so relentlessly on the metalwork. It looks like aluminum siding. I like his seamless surfaces far better.

At any rate, I'd love to be inside the fucker during a hailstorm.

re: 3) conium

HAHAHAHAH!!! That thing looks like the Disco Taco Time on 45th in Wallingford.

re: 3) conium

My bad. It's the next door neighbor of the escher-meets-flinstones house.

Yes, but it was much nicer looking before it collapsed into the jumble you see there now.

It looks like the aftermath of a giant Japanese robot battle. Not that that's a bad thing...

Charles, you're usually right on about architecture, but you're wrong about Gehry. Come sit on the UofMN Washington Avenue Bridge at the sun sets over downtown. The light makes the Weisman look like a flaming castle suspended over the bend in the Mississippi.

Institutions hire Gehry to create gingerbread concoctions that convey the prestige of their "brand." But his works give neither dignity to the organizations nor functionality to the users. It's hard to know who to blame more, the client or the star. Ultimately, it's we who suffer; architectural progress falls backwards with each stroke of the pen (or wad of paper).

Does one need a license to practice architecture?

Does that one section move like a garbage truck when it's squashing the load?

some folks need to get off the street grade

Meh. Liquid crystal flat screen libraries will render it obsolete in months, then it'll be off to a landfill in China.

Awww, cute. They're putting wittle pieces of it together on the ground before assembwing it.

@9:
the emp is a piece of shit, i have no idea what gehry was thinking, other than he hates microsoft as much as everyone else and wanted to take allen for a ride.

however, the central library is one of the better buildings in the northwest. frankly. anyone who says otherwise is a log cabin republican.

@22 the emp is brilliant-- it's a glorified plane wreck in Boeing's "company town"- & that alone is gorgeous- but it's also pleasant on the inside- pretty fair acoustics in more than one place... and was a challenge to build (in a craftsman-free world of 'modular' paradigmatics). Look again... & think again.
^..^

i'm looking at the construction right now. it could be worse. it is sadly reminiscent of bilbao in an uncreative way, and the parts still look disjointed. there is no discourse with the rest of campus or even the immediate surroundings (which is bad considering that it nearly connects to fine hall).

but more importantly, we'll see how it functions. few people argue that gehry buildings look cool, the problem is that he has a cocky tendency to put his 'gehryness' (i.e., form) over the program of the building.

Sad to think that those of us who recognize successful architecture are still waiting for starchitect Frank Gehry to come up with a good building. In the meantime, we encourage any of Gehry's attempts that deviate from his own "palette," as though he was just starting out as an architect. Stop hiring Gehry!

The EMP is truly remarkable -- one of the few pieces of truly moving architecture.

Every time I see it, I am reminded that my very worst work is not on public display.

I like the EMP building. Yep, I think it's both cool and beautiful. There, I said it.