THE DARING OF GEHRY
Time|April 10 - 17, 2023 (Double Issue)
Revisiting the museum that started it all, the 94-year-old architect reflects on his methods, his influence, and his ambitious new projects
Belinda Luscombe
THE DARING OF GEHRY

FRANK GEHRY WANTS TO BUILD A PARK IN LOS ANGELES. Not just a normal park on empty land; that’s for lightweights. Gehry wants to take chunks of the legendarily unlovely Los Angeles River, a 51-mile engineered waterway mostly lined with concrete, and suspend parks over them. It sounds like a pipe dream, or in this case more of a channel dream; it’s expensive, unprecedented, structurally complex, and anathema to many of the locals. But Gehry, 94, has made a career of overcoming such obstacles and, in the process, transforming cities.

Skepticism was also the initial response of officials in charge of selecting the architect for the Guggenheim Museum in the northern Spanish town of Bilbao, upon seeing the extremely rough models Gehry presented in 1991, in one version of which a tower was represented by an old bottle. “There was a lot of ‘Oh my God, what?’” says Juan Ignacio Vidarte, the director general of the gallery, who was at the meeting where Gehry made his pitch. “But after trying to understand, there was the unanimous decision that this was the right project.”

Gehry won the competition with a design that looks from some angles like a silverized Spanish galleon and from others like a prayer circle of titanium nuns. The finished building not only put Gehry on the map globally, and Bilbao on the map globally, but also became that very rare thing: a cultural artifact that was a classic as soon as it appeared. The officials behind the plan to revive Bilbao had hoped to get 500,000 people a year to visit. In the first three years after its 1997 opening, they got 4 million, and have had 21 million in the years since.

Bu hikaye Time dergisinin April 10 - 17, 2023 (Double Issue) sayısından alınmıştır.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.

Bu hikaye Time dergisinin April 10 - 17, 2023 (Double Issue) sayısından alınmıştır.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.

TIME DERGISINDEN DAHA FAZLA HIKAYETümünü görüntüle
A timely thriller for a mad, mad world
Time

A timely thriller for a mad, mad world

A’70s-style paranoid thriller grounded in the partisan polarization of today

time-read
2 dak  |
December 09, 2024
Freshwater reserves
Time

Freshwater reserves

A troubling dip

time-read
1 min  |
December 09, 2024
An exuberant ode to human possibility
Time

An exuberant ode to human possibility

VERY RARELY DOES THE RIGHT MOVIE ARRIVE AT precisely the right time, at a moment when compassion is in short supply and the collective human imagination has come to feel shrunken and desiccated.

time-read
3 dak  |
December 09, 2024
Broadcasting a crisis for the world to see
Time

Broadcasting a crisis for the world to see

ON SEPT. 5, 1972, A 32-YEAR-OLD PRODUCER NAMED Geoffrey S. Mason was working in a control room for ABC Sports in Munich while 12 hostages, including several members of the Israeli Olympic delegation, were being held in a building nearby.

time-read
4 dak  |
December 09, 2024
The Power of the Peer
Time

The Power of the Peer

WITH MENTAL-HEALTH CARE IN SHORT SUPPLY, CAN REGULAR PEOPLE FILL THE GAP?

time-read
7 dak  |
December 09, 2024
QUEERING THE STORY
Time

QUEERING THE STORY

Luca Guadagnino directs Daniel Craig in an adaptation of William S. Burroughs' 1985 novella Queer

time-read
6 dak  |
December 09, 2024
Shopping under the influence
Time

Shopping under the influence

LTK CO-FOUNDER AMBER VENZ BOX SAW THE FUTURE OF RETAIL. IT TOOK YEARS FOR THE REST OF THE WORLD TO CATCH UP

time-read
10+ dak  |
December 09, 2024
The Kingmaker
Time

The Kingmaker

Elon Musk's partnership with the President-elect

time-read
10+ dak  |
December 09, 2024
Turkey's Erdogan plots his next power grab
Time

Turkey's Erdogan plots his next power grab

RECEP TAYYIP Erdogan is a political survivor.

time-read
2 dak  |
December 09, 2024
Why maiden names matter in the age of AI and identity
Time

Why maiden names matter in the age of AI and identity

IN THE DIGITAL AGE, A NAME IS MORE THAN JUST A label. It's tied to our professional history and social media presence.

time-read
2 dak  |
December 09, 2024