9/10/2010 Revisiting the LA 12: Frank Gehry Int…

revisiting the LA 12 interview with frank gehry santa monica, may 9, 1997

JM=Jennifer Minasian Architectural

Design
MD=Mark Dillon Professionally
accredited course
BZ=Bernard Zimmerman Full-time and part-
time
www.sobe.salford.ac.uk

What have been the rewards of practicing architecture?

Archengine
Well, it ain't money. But there's a lot of satisfaction in seeing those buildings go up. I thought that was going to be Australia
Architects and
the main satisfaction, actually. Now I know that for me, it's different. It's the whole process of getting from the very Interior Designers
first day with the client to the end, is more important than the end. And to punctuate that point, there are three Justin Quinlan MD,
buildings that I did that I have never gone to see. One is the Herman Miller project in Sacramento, which I'm very Sydney & Perth
www.archengine.com.au
proud of. But the client changed at the end - the same people weren't there and so it just didn't mean as much.

JM: Was it not executed the way you anticipated?

Interior Design
Courses
Yes, it was absolutely perfect. 100% Home Study
- Introductory,
The project in Iowa, for the laser lab, it started out as a real client for a laser lab, and as it was under construction Diploma and BA.
the university changed it and decided not to do a laser lab. I don't know what the building's used for. The people Online Discounts
that I dealt with are gone, so I never went to see it. I show pictures of it in my lectures; I'm proud of it, but I didn't www.rhodec.org

care. And there 's a house in the valley called the Sirmai-Peterson house, and I think it's the best house I've ever
done. I've never seen it. Study
Architecture
JM: Is it because you want to keep that ideal in your mind? Abroad
Agriculture Course
No, not at all. The clients are kind of goofy - they're very private people. Our relationship didn't end up - it's friendly, I Directory Find
Your Course
mean, they weren't mad, they love the house, in fact they treat it like a shrine to me! Michelangelo Antonioni was Quickly & Easily
here a few weeks ago, and he wanted to use the house for his LA film. We called them up, and they wouldn't let StudyLink.com/Study-Ar
him in! They thought he'd scratch the slate floors. They're very strange, and they're private, and they don't really
want to deal with anybody from the outside, it's psychological stuff going on. So I've never gone!

Have they tried to get you to come over?

No, I thought if they really wanted to have a little friendly dinner party, you know, christen the place, do something
together, but they never have. We wanted to photograph it a couple of years ago and we sent out Grant Mumford,
and they were very strange to him. They let him in for the first day, he got a few pictures, he left his equipment there
in the middle of the room because he was coming back the next day. And they freaked and he got back the next
day and all his equipment was outside, and they wouldn't let him in. So there's a kind of psychological line that I
don't want to cross. But if they called me and invited me to come out for dinner or some drinks, I'd say great, that
would be all right, I'd go. But since they're not capable of doing that, I have to respect that. But it was fun doing the
house, and it is, I think, as good as I've ever done it. It hasn't been published very much. It hasn't been really talked
about. Maybe someday in the future someone will pick up on it. I don't begrudge it, I'm not angry - it's just the way it
is.

Iím working right now with the people in Bilbao, Spain, and the Guggenheim, and Tom Kranz is a visionary. He's
intellectually stimulating, he's a lot of fun, we can spend hours talking about monuments in Turkey, paintings in Italy,
you know. He provoked me a lot, in the design of the building, pushed me. Believe it or not, there were days you
give up and he wouldn't let me. We have a great relationship. The Basques have become like family. We spend
time there. The only problem is that in October it's coming to an end. I just wrote a piece for one of their magazines
about this: in October the building opens and then you're finished, right? I mean, I could probably concoct reasons
to go there for another six or eight months, but after that I'd be pushing it. And then we'll be off to another client. So
you lose these family things. I had that kind of relationship with the American Center (in Paris) people, but then they
all disappeared when it got in trouble. I have that relationship in LA with Disney Hall, with Ernest Fleishman, Essa-
Pekka Salonen, Diane Disney Miller, and the acousticians from Japan, and members of the orchestra. We have a
family relationship. But other people are involved now who are not so interested and that's creating a little havoc,
but I think it will all settle out eventually.

Those relationships, in the end, are the most gratifying.

Have any other professions or types of work ever interested you?

Well, I'm very interested in playing in the NHL some day. So I skate every day, and I'm just learning to do
crossovers, both ways and backwards. That's hard to do at my age. And I scored my first goal in an exhibition
game in Long Beach a few weeks ago! I couldn't believe it. When I scored it I didn't realize I'd done it, and you
know how they all come over to you, and scratch on your head like monkeys. And one of these guys was Mark
Hardy who used to play with the Kings; he actually passed me the puck that I got the goal with, so he got the assist.

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And Mark Hardy is like, my hero. And there he is doing this on my head - so that's what I want to do, is play in the
NHL! See, Gretsky's going to be retiring soon!

What could students learn from reviewing the body of work you have completed?

Well, I've been persistent. I've followed my intuitions and my nose. It's corny to say I haven't compromised -
everyone compromises in some way, but I've just done what I do and developed logic systems that support the
ideas. And I've managed to develop ways of getting the stuff built that makes it reasonable within normal budgets
of normal human beings. I never thought there were overriding rules in the universe that we understood that made it
compelling to do architecture one way or another; anybody's logic system was as good as another person's. And
the only thing that guides me is respect for your fellow human being, whether they be a genius or Joe Average, or
mentally impaired. They are equal to me. And that hasn't been easy to come by, to be respectful of everybody. Like
being a good neighbor. I know that the neighbors didn't like my house, but I didn't do anything that was detrimental
to them. I used the materials they were using. I was trying to understand myself as a middle-class bloke in this
middle-class neighborhood: how would I fit in, with my architectural values? Using materials that were consistent
with the neighborhood.

JM: Do really think those materials are consistent with the neighborhood? I mean, there's no corrugated metal
on the houses, there's no chain link fences on or around the other houses. I always see that as something that's
transplanted from building of a nearby commercial or light industrial landscape.

No, when I built that house, that neighborhood was full of trailer trucks in the back yards, and often on the lawn. A lot
of old, aging Cadillacs and big cars on blocks on the front lawn, people fixing their cars. A lot of chain link fences,
corrugated metal; I know they didn't use it like I did, and that's the difference.

JM: So you look at it as if the entire yard and house is the landscape from which these things are taken - those
elements are just moved from utilitarian roles in the yard to -

You got it. If you go through Brentwood, you'll see five or six million dollar houses with tennis courts in the front. So
you drive up to this five or six million dollar house with a chain link fence, and nobody thinks about it.

JM: It's playing a particular role in that setting.

Yeah. So then if I take the same chain link fence put it in front of my house and make it a decorative element, then -
it's the same chain link! It's just not in a recognizable place. There's a lot of denial about chain link. I have a lawyer
friend who used to kid me about my chain link. He bought a house in Bel Air and he called me one day and he said
he was having trouble with the architect in the kitchen, and would I come and look at it. So he picked me up in his
Rolls Royce and he drove me to his house. And I walked in the house, looked out to the garden, and there's a
tennis court with a chain link fence. You can see it clearly from the dining room, the living room, and the bedrooms.
So I said, 'Mickey, I'm embarrassed. I've converted you to this material. I apologize.' 'What are you talking about?
That's a tennis court.' I said, 'It's a chain link fence.' I even showed him how to get rid of it, and he wouldn't do it! He
wants the symbol of tennis courts. It's a denial system that was interesting to me. That's why I played with it in the
first place. It wasn't anything other than that I was fascinated by this denial. There's a lot of it in our culture.

MD: Have the angry neighbors over time approached you again?

Well, the angriest neighbor copied the house, two doors down. She built a house inside a house. There wasn't that
much anger. This one woman, two doors down - she was a lawyer - who didn't understand, I took her on a walk and
I showed her the chain link and I showed her the camper trucks; it was just that was normal, you see, as long as it
was it was normal, it didn't matter that it was ugly and dirty and messy. It was normal, and I was abnormal. I
suppose one could make a case for being normal. But then, that is some kind of tyranny. Some aesthetic tyranny.
And that is what architects are supposed to do - to break out of that. To show the way from some kind of aesthetic
tyranny to some kind of heaven, Valhalla, of design, which we all believe in.

What particular projects have you learned the most from?

The latest one. I don’t know, I forget.

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revisiting the LA 12 interview with frank gehry santa monica, may 9, 1997

MD: When the LA 12 exhibit first opened and I went to it as a student, I remember a faculty member was sort of
arguing about the collection of architects. Thereís some irony, because his argument was, basically - you had
completed the Ron Davis project, and you had done some other work, but your work was up there with Cesar Architectural
Design
Pelli, Craig Ellwood, who at that time had built large projects. And they asked, why were you being included in Professionally
the group? I remember distinctly Bernard Zimmerman defending your presence in the group. And the irony accredited course
now, after twenty years, looking back and having just walked though your office and seen the enormous scale of Full-time and part-
the projects and the range from Japan to Germany - so much has happened in that twenty years. Certainly there time
www.sobe.salford.ac.uk
must have been key moments along the way, in terms of the body of work. Do you see your house as one of
those projects?
Archengine
Yes. Australia
Architects and
JM: Did you expect it to get the kind of attention that it did? Interior Designers
Justin Quinlan MD,
Sydney & Perth
No, I didn't expect any of that. I was taken by surprise. www.archengine.com.au

JM: Are you comfortable with the position it's taken within your body of work?
Steel Arch
Well, comfortable or uncomfortable, it doesn't matter. I never think about that. I think there are projects that aren't as Buildings
good as others, but that has to do with many other factors. Clients - you know, it does take a good client, a good Steel aircraft
program, a good budget. People will have to be willing to play with you. You don't do this by yourself. I would say hangers
the best projects happen when the client and the architect and the intentions are in synch. It's difficult - I have a Distributed
worldwide
project even now, the people are wealthy, and it's a nice project - a great project. But it's not the same. I've had www.banyansteelarchsy
trouble with that one. It could be a much better project, if the clients would get involved.

And then there are projects where you start to go to far. I get out on a limb myself, where if you follow your nose like Architecture
Courses
I do, sometimes you get out there where all of a sudden it's like the guy who walks out over the cliff and there's no Search
cliff and he's out there - 'aaaugh!' (flails his arms) And occasionally - that happened in that little project in Bad Architecture
Oeynhausen (EMR Communication of Technology Center), the clients kept egging me on. The way they spoke to Courses Abroad
me was, they'd come into the office and they'd say, 'Wow! Wow!' and then the guy'd say, 'Can you get me one Find Your Course
more 'wow'?'?' So that eggs you on! This guy thinks this is great, and now he wants to push it further! We got out Quickly & Easily
StudyLink.com/Study-Ar
there much further, and realized that the client was caught in a thing that was going to hurt him. I looked at it all and
pulled back from where the project was going to a safer haven for him. I wrote him a note, 'Sleep well tonight. It's
OK. It's still wow, wow, wow,' but it's not wow, wow, wow, WOW, wow.' But this is our recommendation. We don't
want you to get hurt.' I see the project it could have been. And that extra 'wow' would have killed the project for him
because it would have meant a couple of extra months of work, and we would have been over schedule. It's a
power station, and it had to be open by a certain day or he lost his franchise. So he kept the franchise, the
building's built, it's not as good as it was going to be. But I learned a lot from it, and it was a stepping stone to
Bilbao. And so the extra 'wow' which we learned on that project but that didn't get into it ended up finding its way
into Bilbao. I got those German clients to go to Bilbao, and I explained that to them. 'This is partly your project - part
of this is you.' And I got a nice letter from them saying how proud they were to participate. It's that kind of thing,
working with clients, working with people, and I love the people.

Do you think that your experiments with cheap materials could be applied to low-cost housing?

We did low-cost housing in Frankfurt. With (?) and galvanized metal. It looks OK. It's not 'wow, wow.'

Did it have a big impact on the budget?

No. We were within budget, but I don't think that's the issue. Architecture, unfortunately, isn't the controlling factor in
low- cost housing. In America we're not even asked to participate, so we're negligible. In Germany it's not that way.
In Germany - it's strange, you've got to realize that Germany first embraced Picasso, before France did, and that's
consistent with them. My first European buildings were in Germany. My best fans and clients are in Germany. It's
funny, especially when you're a Jew, Germany doesn't have that cachet - you're kind of worried about it. Who are
these guys that like me? But that kind of taste for art and architecture doesn't exist here in America. I've been
exposed to British and Spanish royalty, the French government, the Japanese emperor. And I'm talking about
having dinner with them, spending an evening with them, getting calls from Chirac and Mitterand, over the years.
The American government won't even hire me to do anything. In fact we submit for courthouses every once in a
while, and we get funny letters back, and people on the selection committee, the GSA (General Services
Administration) guys, just guffaw to think of someone like me doing the project. We've got a long way to go. On the
other hand, we build more buildings so there are more, better 'Architecture' buildings. But generally that's not a big
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value. It is Germany. It is in France. It is even in Britain, which is really conservative, there's more interest in
architecture. In Germany the discussion about architecture is in the government. The political parties talk about it
and when one party comes in an another goes out, a whole new architecture comes in with the party. It's disgusting
on some level, and it's wonderful on others.

What changes have you seen in the profession of architecture in the past twenty years?

Well, I don't pay much attention to what everyone else is doing. It goes up and down. We went through Post-
Modernism. Which Bernard and I hated. Because we're old Modernists, right? It seemed like an applique, it
seemed irrelevant, it seemed like a pastiche. Yet there was something in it, something they were yearning for in
scale, feeling, and emotion that the Modern glass boxes lacked. See, the Modern glass boxes played right into the
developers' hands. It gave them a cheap way to move. The legacy of Mies persists. People are still building those
buildings, with the residual Mies office. Because they are predictable, they know how much they cost, and there's
an architectural cachet that goes with it that doesn't cost anything. But if you go to the Lake Shore apartments,
there's a feeling, an emotion. If you go to the ersatz Mies, it doesn't do that. So there was some sense in his hand,
in his head, that translated from all that to the materials. And 99% of the buildings made that are ripping that off are
even further denigrated. In a gradual downslide to frigid, cold, impersonal. So the Post-Modern thing was
inevitable, that there would be a backlash. But then again, the people that were doing it well, and I think Moore was
doing it decent, I wouldn't say that it was great, but it was decent, some of those pieces. Bill Turnbull did it better.
Graves was into a language that was unique with it, even though the first iterations were faceless, lifeless. But
again, the developers and the culture grabbed it because it was easy; they bastardized it, chewed it up and spit it
out and made it into crap, to the point that nobody likes it any more. They took it apart and screwed it up. So now
the backlash is to the new simplicity. And it's more palatable to us old Modernists, because it smells like, looks
like, what we came from. In actual fact it's more decorative than the Post-Modern stuff. It's as much a pastiche - it's
a pastiche of Modernism that's not convincing. But it's more acceptable because it looks like Modernism.
Intellectually, it's OK. But if people want to go back to that - if you read the recent essays about the Museum of
Modern Art selection process, our own Fred Fisher was quoted as saying something like, thank god we're going
back to the box.

For me, architecture is about taking the emotions you have and getting through a process of building. Hundreds of
people, hundreds of hands on the tiller other than your own. Getting to the end of the day with a building that has
some feeling, and emotion. I've just been to Liebeskind's Jewish Museum in Berlin. Now he comes from a
holocaust family, and he's very angry. I saw the building and I like it - it's got a lot of problematic things about it,
architecturally, but there's so much detail in a building like that. It's huge. But what's impressive to me is that it's the
angriest building I've ever seen. It denies public space. When I saw the big, giant thing I thought, well cute, but... But
when you're there, it's a complete denial of public space. I mean it's relentlessly anti-public-space. That anger
comes through. And why not, in a building about the holocaust. By the time I got through it, I was crying. I was very
moved by it. And I was not expecting to feel anything. I don't know if he can do it again for a museum that's about
Modern art, he brings the same anger to it, then he's one-note! But I think he's not, I think he's very bright. There's
something going on there. For me that's it.

The other architect who could do that, who I never met, he died, is Scharoun. There's two Scharoun Buildings in
Berlin, the Philharmonic and the library. And when I was starting work on Disney Hall I went to the Philharmonic
because Ernest Fleishman liked the feeling of the Philharmonic, with the orchestra pulled forward and the seats
around the back. I attended five concerts there over a period of two years. To three of those concerts I went
completely alone, I didn't know anybody there. Every time I went, I met people. It was easy to talk to people. The
building engenders that. I attend a lot of concerts at the Dorothy Chandler, and I never meet anybody. And I know
everybody here. I don't know anybody in Berlin. I always meet somebody. I never meet anybody here. The building
body language is such that it prevents that. And you go into the library and it does the same thing. And I don't even
like the detailing of Scharoun, it's hokey for me, there's all kinds of stuff, I could go on endlessly, but the thing does
have wonderful feeling. It's a wonderful place to listen to music, it's a nice human experience to go there. I always
thought Aalto was that person, that could do that, but I went to his concert halls and I didn't find that. His smaller
buildings did that, you felt good in them, you felt the Master. But in the concert hall in Helsinki, Finlandia Hall, it
didn't have that. Scharoun did it twice, and then Scharoun's assistant built the chamber hall, in the style of Scharoun
next door, and it doesn't have the feeling. You can go from one to the other and it's just - dishwater. So I think what
happens is that people's feelings, their personalities, come through the work. If you follow your own instincts, it
becomes yourself somehow. Our buildings look like us. It's a signature, your sensibilities. Like how I look, here it is,
my stuff looks like this.

Are there changes you would like to see in the profession?

Yes. I would like the architect to be the master builder again. And I would challenge the AIA on this issue. For
whatever reason the AIA has not assumed leadership in making the architect responsible. It's helped create a
system that infantilizes the architect in the business world. And I think it's done a disservice to the profession of
architecture. But most people in the AIA are into being a part of a business; they've abdicated their responsibilities
as architects and confused it with a business venture, instead of an artistic venture. I think it's been a disaster. I
think that the path to changing it is pretty clear, and we're starting to nip at the edges of it with the way we're
practicing now. I would love to flip it over right now, but I can't because of the legal system makes it too precarious.

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But for instance, in Bilbao - there is no straight piece of steel in the entire project. It came in 18% under budget with
six bidding contractors. And they were within one percent of each other. So it's a very tight bid spread on a very
complicated building. The way we did it is we did very definitive drawings, and then through the use of the
computer we were able to develop the representation of every bolt hole and every bolt, and measurements for
every piece of steel so that instead of the steel contractor using the drawings, we gave him a disk, and he
fabricated the steel from the disk and played back to us a shop drawing. So it was like ordering fruit at the grocery
store. There was nothing to think about, and they loved it. Because it removed the risk. And responsibility. So in
effect we were taking on more responsibility. We were demystifying the complexity of it, and all they had to do was
manufacture these pieces, and assemble them on the site like an erector set. And in that big job with thousands
and thousands of piece of steel, only two pieces of steel maybe six feet long had to be re-fabricated, because
when it came time to put them together, they were less than four or five inches off. A tab had to be welded on to
them to close the gap. But when you do that, the architect becomes the parent and the contractor becomes the
child. In the normal relationship, the contractor is the parent and the architect is the child. And any practicing
architect today understands that. The owner gravitates to the contractor, because they're in control of the purse
strings. And the owner has added further insult to the equation in the last few years by adding the construction
management people, who are parasitic. They get a percentage for being construction managers, but they have no
responsibility. It's an idiocy that an owner hires somebody, puts them in the most responsible role in the equation,
over the architect, over the contractor, and this person has no financial risk or responsibility in the equation. So
there's no accountability - they can say anything, and they do. They're completely useless. One percent of the cost
of construction goes to that idiocy. So it's not about money, it's not about fees, it's about a warped system that has
been promoted, or prolonged, by the AIA and its contracting systems and its working with legal - at this point in my
life, I don't feel like the AIA represents me. I'm from another planet. I can't relate to what they're doing.

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revisiting the LA 12 interview with frank gehry santa monica, may 9, 1997

MD: What you're describing would require that the design architect is the same body that produces the
drawings, and does the rest of that, and certainly in this country in the last 15 years we've seen a kind of
separation of design architect and construction documents architect. Architectural
Design
Professionally
Well, that's going on now with Disney Hall. They want to divide and conquer because the clients can take control
accredited course
better that way. And it works for standard commercial buildings, there's no expectation of architecture. Full-time and part-
time
MD: But this process that you're talking about, with the computer being able to model it to that level of www.sobe.salford.ac.uk
exactness, and then to basically offer that value back into the body of the project - that seems like it would be a
very valuable tool for the architect to pursue.
Archengine
Australia
We're exploring that with MIT. We've got a link up with Harvard and Dessault Catia Systems in France; this is
Architects and
probably the only office doing it, because we're using current forms, so nobody needs to do that. But I think that Interior Designers
once that system is developed... Bill Mitchell, who started at UCLA, then went to Harvard, and is now at MIT, he's Justin Quinlan MD,
been pioneering the use of the computer in architecture. But in the last six years, up until last year, he's been using Sydney & Perth
www.archengine.com.au
it as a presentation tool. And that's the worst use of it, as far as I'm concerned! It takes all the juice out of it, it
dehumanizes everything. The whole process has been to add more megabytes, more colors, more shades of
color, more information, so you can get closer and closer to the "real" and we never use it as that. We only use it, I Study
take those shapes and we digitize them with that gadget over there, so I can take those kind of shapes and in an Architecture
afternoon I can get an estimate of the skin surface to within seven decimal points of accuracy, and I know how Abroad
Agriculture Course
much it costs per square foot to do skin surface like that. So I've got an exterior skin budget. And I know very Directory Find
quickly what the structural requirements are. I use the computer to rationalize the shapes. Like on Disney Hall, we Your Course
could have 5% double-curved stone, and 50-50 flat and single-curved stone. That gave us a budget for the exterior Quickly & Easily
StudyLink.com/Study-Ar
skin of Disney Hall. All those shapes that look a lot more cantankerous than 5% and 50-50, are well within those
parameters. I do the models, I get the shapes, and then I rationalize them. So I know if I just move something a
A Talk by Eric
fragment of an inch, and you barely notice it. I use the computer to refine those shapes. I've also used it to design
Owen Moss
on, and one of the best shapes I've ever done is that gleaming metal thing, the conference room for the German On Pidgeon
project, that whole thing was done on the computer. But for me it was like putting my hand in the fire - how long Digital. One of
could I keep it in? And it was 4 _ minutes. What throws you off is that when you're designing, you have a dream of 180+ talks by
something, an image, and it's often better than what you can get to the paper or get to the model. But at least it's leading world
architects.
there. The computer is antithetical to that. Any great idea that you put in the computer looks like shit. So it takes 4 _ www.pidgeondigital.com
minutes for the computer to win - and I've lost my image. And that's when I pull my hand out of the fire. If you're
willing to play with it - now I'm intrigued by it - it could cut a lot of time out of what I'm doing. Probably just about the
time I figure it out, I'll go back to making square buildings.

MD: Do you use the computer to animate the construction process at all? To help the contractors?

Right now we use it for shop drawing, so after I'm finished, if you look at these models they've got tape and all kinds
of stuff on them, they're rough. We then put it in the computer, we smooth all that out, and we play it back, and the
computer will cut a model. It will cut the forms out for you. You can look at that and then you can go back to the
computer and play with the forms, and slowly modify it. If the first go-around comes to within 10% of the end, then
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the last 10% you change in the computer, you rationalize the shapes for budget reasons, it's very fast. Now there's
a new scanner that preempts this one - the equipment becomes obsolete every six months - with a laser beam.
You just go right over it and in twenty minutes you can the thing. The gadget is amazing. I don't know how to turn it
on. I don't have one on my desk, but they're getting all the equipment for me. I'm going to take it home, I'm afraid to
have it here. I mean, I've just learned to use my little Casio for the phone numbers and addresses. But the first time I
was out with it I erased everything.

JM: Taking that form within the building in Berlin as an example, where did you actually start with that form? Did
you start with a three-dimensional idea and make a two-dimensional sketch of it and then move to the computer
modeling? Where does it begin and how does it evolve?

I bought a bunch of red velvet at a fabric store, because it was stiff, and we started playing with that. We got
shapes, and we sprayed wax on it to harden it. Then we digitized it. And it looked weird. That was the starting
point. I mean you have to invent ways of getting into it. If you wander around you'll see they have a lot of...

BZ: By the way, Frank, you mentioned about the AIA but you didn't mention your idea for change. Do you want
to mention it?

JM: Well, we're in the middle of another subject here -

Yeah, I said it - the computer, and - I forget what it was.

BZ: You wanted to form an alternative to the AIA and call it "borscht".

Oh, yeah - (laughs) When Bernard Zimmerman and I get to talking to each other we invent things. Maybe someday.
You know, were old radicals. We used to belong to a thing called the Architectural Panel, with Greg Ian and Garret
Eckbo, and I don't remember who else, all kinds of funny people.

BZ: You're talking from the heart. This is good.

Where else do you talk from?

BZ: I talk from a political point of view.

Oh - well, you're always trying to get jobs.

BZ: I've got to stay in school. I found out I'm an embarrassment to the school. I asked (Michael) Folonis why I
was having so much trouble there, and he says he got it from the higher-ups that I'm an embarrassment to Cal
Poly.

Well, you've got to do what I did and go to Canyon Ranch and lose some weight. Just do what I did. And then
you've got to get a picture of that guy with the muscles - I put that on my bathroom mirror, and then I think I'm that
guy.

BZ: You think it's because I'm fat that I'm an embarrassment?

Yeah.

BZ: I hope so!

I think you're an embarrassment because you talk a lot about ideas. You're in the wrong pew. You should have
been me. We started out together, and you were supposed to be like me. You were there, but you somehow got
kicked out of the -

BZ: No, I didn't get kicked out. The race isn't over for a lot of things.

MD: Do you think that being a university professor is stifling?

For Bernard it is. Bernard is a sensitive, thoughtful, talented architect. It's the roll of the dice. He was outspoken
way before anybody was. He always bled all over the page. He loves architecture, he loves architects. It's just not
acceptable behavior! Listen, Bernard, you know I went to USC, right? How many people that have gone to school
at USC have gotten along as far as I have?

BZ: There's nobody in the history of USC.

OK. So last year, Harry Hufford, who took over the Committee to Build Disney Hall, had lunch with a man named
Sample, who's the president of USC. And Sample said to him, Harry, the problem you're having with Disney Hall is
that your architect Gehry doesn't know how to build buildings. So two weeks later, the new dean Bob Timme calls
and says, hey, I'm the new dean, I want to get you involved with the school, you're one of our illustrious graduates...
And I said, Timme, call Mr. Sample and tell him that. And have him call me. So that's what they say! There's been a
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whole group of them that have kept me out of there. They've never invited me to lecture. Ray Eames told me that.
About six months before she died, she went down there one day to give a talk. On the way back she stopped by my
office, and she was livid. I've just experienced something disgusting. I was down there giving a talk, and two or
three of the professors got up in this forum and talked against you. And I know who they are: DeBretville, Panos
Koulermos. So I'm disgusting to them like you are to these other guys. So don't be alone in that. You're OK.

BZ: But I'm in the Little League, and you're in the Major League!

I think you're in the Major League.

BZ: Listen, I have one thing to say to you. I asked Bob Cramer who the best architects of the 20th century are.
He's a very good architect, an experimenter, worked with Lautner and all that. And he said, Le Corbusier, and
Frank Gehry." And forgive me, but I said, 'Frank Gehry?'

Bernard, you're not ready to let me in the club! I'm letting you in, but you won't let me in!

BZ: So listen to this! You call yourself a modernist, but you've done something beyond it. You've made a shift in
architecture. And that's how you recognize an architect of greatness in the 20th century. What shift did you
make? Do any of you know the shift? Anybody?

MD: Well, you're asking a very sort of personal question. For me, Frank Gehry has revisited many of those
doors that architects like Le Corbusier opened up. If I may, Le Corbusier's Salvation Army building in Paris and
the Loyola Law School are comparable ordering structures, and revisit an idea about architecture. They're not
the same - but there's something there which touches one's heart in the way that they work. The Mill Owners
Association in Ahmadabad and the DG Bank in Berlin (Pariserplatz 3), I mean, when you stand and see the
theater in the Mill Owners Association inside that huge, enormous space. Revisiting is a bad way of saying it, but
there's something there - you must be a wonderful student of architecture to be able to know where all those doors
are that no one since then has passed back through.

The one thing that is misunderstood about me is that whatever scholarly thing - I don't look like a scholar, right? And
I don't parler that language of all those guys. But I have studied architecture. I know more than they think I know. A
few years ago I gave a talk at Princeton. It was for Michael Graves being 25 years at Princeton, so they invited
everybody in the world to come and talk for 5 minutes about Michael Graves. But then they realized no one wanted
to talk about Michael Graves, so they let everybody talk about their own work. After my five minutes, Bob Maxwell,
who was the dean of Princeton, got up and says, "Mr. Gehry, do you have nightmares? Is that how you concoct this
stuff?" And I didn't answer, I just figured he was an idiot. Then after everybody finished their talk there was a panel,
and I was on the panel with Irving Lavin, who has the chair at Princeton in the Institute for Advanced Studies that
Einstein had. He's in 17th century architecture. So we were talking on the panel together, and we're really close
friends, we've traveled together and talked together and been up one side and down the other together. We've
been to all the monuments in Rome, and throughout Italy. So we're really close friends, and we started reminiscing,
and we started getting into some pretty heavy discussions about Borromini. And the same hand came up, from
Bob Maxwell. And I thought, 'what the hell's he going to say now?' He said, 'Mr. Gehry, I just want to apologize.' Now
because I could banter with a scholar on architectural history, I was acceptable. Now all of a sudden he understood.
Well, OK, maybe there's some logic to that. And I do play, 'aw, shucks.' I'm good at that, I'm a good aw, shucks-er.

JM: How do you think that history will see you? How do you see what people write about you?

I try not to read it, because it usually doesn't make much sense to me.

JM: Where do you think people usually divert from what you really think is there?

Well, usually, good writers bring themselves to it, right? And I'm like a voyeur when I do read it. I sort of get excited
about it, how funny they are. You know, one of the best writers about me is Kurt Forester. He talks about dance and
other things. I get a lot of guys who hate what I do, too. The Prague building got terrible reviews from Czechs,
because they didn't like what I was doing. The architecture school there. The city liked it, and the president, but if
you read the good stuff you have to read the bad stuff, and I don't want to read the good stuff. So I just avoid it all.
Every once in a while someone will tell me that somebody got it right, and I'll read it.

I've done this for more than an hour now, and you said 45 minutes. Can I go back to work?

Would you make a general comment about what has generated what we see in Los Angeles today, and how you
see it developing?

Well, LA is sort of the front lines. It was the front lines after the war. The wide open spaces and so the automobile
culture could construct the city in its own image, and it did. It gave young architects, and I was a young architect
back then, a certain freedom that you don't have in a nineteenth-century context, where you've got to be respectful
of so many things. In LA you didn't have it. It allowed a certain freedom a certain growth, I think that's why a lot of
work here has become interesting to people in Europe. I think that when they come here - when they see the
pictures, they don't realize that the architects are doing the same kind of thing they're doing, except the context is
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different, it allows a different kind of response. But I think that freedom has been good here. I think where it's going,
where it's gone, it's still the same kind of business-oriented power structure. And they're caught up with 19th
century models. They just can't seem to give it up. But LA developed a linear downtown, Wilshire Boulevard, which
connects the most diverse economic and ethnic populations you can imagine in the world. And most of that
population lives within three blocks of Wilshire Boulevard, they can walk to it. It's a very high-density corridor, and
very diverse. But it's been rejected in favor of a 19th century downtown model that probably ain't ever going to
work. If the cathedral were built at McArthur Park, and if MOCA moved to near LACMA. And Disney Hall were built
at the Wadsworth, that would reinforce the city we have. And it would work better.

Citizens Committee Rallies in Support of Walt Disney Concert Hall Committee Invites Involvement in Events, Public-
Awareness Campaign

LOS ANGELES--Citizens Committee for Walt Disney Concert Hall has been created to gather grass-roots support for the construction
of the future home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic with conductor Esa Pekka Salonen in Downtown LA. The Committee believes the
construction of this building is important to Southern California, contributing to Los Angelesí cultural community, its architectural
heritage, its public image, and indeed, its very soul. An independent gathering of concerned citizens, the Committee is staging
programs and events to educate the public on the worth and value of such an institution.

Upcoming events will include post-card-signing campaigns, informational programs and a public forum, all with the involvement of the
architectural, performing arts and government communities, as well as with interested members of the general public.

"We invite people passionate about music, architecture and Los Angeles to participate in these public-awareness efforts," says
Committee Co-Chair architect Bernard Zimmerman.

The Walt Disney Concert Hall is designed by globally-recognized, Los Angeles-based architect Frank Gehry. "This building belongs in
this city," says Committee Co-Chair and architectural communications specialist Julie D. Taylor, "especially in a city of such great
architectural talent and concerns for the arts."

Citizenís Committee for Walt Disney Concert Hall seeks members to show their support of the project. The Committee was organized
by Co-Chairs Bernard Zimmerman, FAIA, of Zimmerman & Associates, and Julie D. Taylor, of Taylor & Company: Communications for
Creative Industries; and Steering Committee members Mathew Chaney, Carl Smith and Melynda Eccles, all of Telemachus Studio;
attorney Gary Coutin; and Joseph F. Romano with Leo A. Daly.

For more information and involvement opportunities, call 310.939.7031.

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