If you were to ask an average American to name one contemporary architect, it is likely that Frank Gehry would be that one. After his successes with buildings like the Guggenhiem in Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Gehry has become an architectural star with his own identifiable brand, or signature look. The problem I have is that when viewing Gehry’s buildings in all of their glittering complexity, somehow I am dissatisfied. The buildings are beautiful, sculptural monuments, and yet I am left wanting.
 
Recently, I had the good fortune of viewing a lecture by Jim Glymph, co-founder of Gehry Technologies and one of the partners that make up Gehry Partners. Glymph’s lecture clarified how the firm moves a design from concept to built form. It also inspired in me several thoughts that go a long way in explaining my dissatisfaction with Gehry as an architect.
 
On their website Gehry Partners announces that every project undertaken by the firm is designed personally and directly by Frank Gehry. According to Glymph, during this design process Gehry avoids giving architectural shape to things until it is necessary. He waits for inspiration to come while working with program-block study models, continually rearranging spaces looking for their optimum relationship. Gehry discusses these options with clients until one day something clicks. Again according to Glymph, what you want to "achieve is the client as a non-architect, sitting around and looking at piles of crumpled paper and have intellectual conversations about them." The goal of this process is to bring the client on board with the decision-making. Once it is necessary to move into architectural shape, Gehry generates hand-drawn sketches. He brings a sketch to the point where he sees everything he wants in it and then translates the sketch into a model. Gehry Partners then digitize the physical model, and it is refined in the computer. The partners transfer these refinements to the physical model, and the process is iterated as long as is necessary for the design to be considered “done.”
 
This process is revolutionary in several ways, but most strikingly in its effects on building fabrication. Because the shapes that Gehry prefers are not easily modeled in typical architectural modeling programs, Gehry Partners began using CATIA, a NURB-based modeling program developed by the aerospace industry. CATIA is CAD-CAM software. In other words, it is not only a design medium but can give computer-driven fabrication machines instructions for building the necessary parts of a design. DIGITAL PROJECT is Gehry Partners’ proprietary name for their modifed CATIA based program. They use DIGITAL PROJECT to make a “master model,” which is a complete digital model that forms part of the contract documents. The master model incorporates the actual structural steel shapes, helps to coordinate the mechanical systems, analyzes the design for repetition of parts and other cost-cutting measures, and can even tell the fabrication machines how to craft each piece of stone, steel or cladding. Another important strength of this method is that it creates a single three-dimensional model that every one can reference. For example, in the case of the Disney Concert Hall, it was not necessary to use a tape measure on-site during construction. Instead, workers used laser-surveying equipment, and took the "ideal" placements directly from the master model. This last advantage significantly cuts down the change orders during construction that are a major source of cost overruns in a typical project.
 
In all of these ways, DIGITAL PROJECT and the Gehry Partners design process are inspiring. So much so that if I am not careful the excitement I feel for their process can make me forget that I have a problem with their product. Why is it that the process Gehry Partners use, and the meaningful revolution that it suggests for the discipline of architecture, is not reflected in the design of the buildings that they create (excepting that it is expressed generally by the fact that cad-cam fabrication is the only practical means to create Gehry's structures)? I think the answer lies in several comments Glymph made regarding Gehry’s role in the design process. Glymph explained that although Gehry translates his sketches into hand built physical models, the digital processes are overseen by the partners. This bifurcated process has enabled the firm to “introduce the computer without interfering with Frank's traditional process that he has used for the last 30 years." In other words, Gehry as master designer is insulated from the revolutionary processes that create architecture from his designs. As the creator of the Gehry brand, Gehry has become the signature designer in his own firm. His pursuits and questions remain on the abstract level, while the innovative and exciting integration of fabrication with design, the quality that makes Gehry’s architecture revolutionary on more than a cosmetic level, remains unexpressed. Because Gehry has been able to maintain his traditional design processes, a rupture exists between the designing and making of his forms. This breach is further revealed in a causal use of materials (as in the Walt Disney Concert Hall where stone was replaced by metal without significant rethinking of form), and in the undeveloped potential of the structural details that are arguably the most articulate and expressive areas of Gehry’s complex geometries.
 
These realizations have made me ponder whether or not, contrary to the opinion of Philip Johnson, Gehry’s buildings embody those qualities that distinguish truly great architecture. I wonder if his buildings will stand the test of time. Specifically, I think they lack the legibility and signification that traditionally great designs possess. From his process, it is obvious that Gehry places great importance in the program interrelationships, but the expression of any power or social relationships that are significant to Gehry and/or the clients are lost in the final form of the building because the shape isn't legible. Even more than illegible, Gehry’s buildings are un-imageable. Not only are visitors denied the ability to read meaning within the architecture, the geometric complexity of Gehry’s designs denies a visitor’s ability to create a lasting particular image of the building. This is the gap that the three-dimensional process leaves, it is streamlined and fast, but it also prevents the development of clarity which the generation of two-dimensional drawings brings. Two-dimensional drawings do take effort to create and understand, but these efforts offer a payback. Drawing is not merely documentary. It is a tool for analysis that requires an architect to filter out excessive or superfluous design moves in favor of a legible structure. Scalar drawings distill selected relationships within design and force them to be more clearly expressed. Yes, drawing favors certain types of relationships and makes others difficult to analyze. But, because the generation of a two-dimensional drawing is an exercise in legibility, it also ensures a building’s potential to express meaning. Without a similar system of distillation, architecture can become little more than bricolage. It is the pursuit of meaning that transforms architecture from a craft to a fine art, but without legibility meaning can not exist. This is why Gehry's buildings disappoint. Their beauty and seemingly impossible construction promise to say something profound, and instead they say little at all. Gehry creates pretty architecture, but without something deeper behind it, pretty things are mere ornament.