About 20 years ago, I asked Frank Gehry how he persuaded clients to take a chance on buildings that look so different from traditional architecture. After all, the people who have the budget to build one of his designs usually want something monumental. They want it to look classical…like ancient Greece or Rome, like Palladio, with columns…something imposing and square. If they are a little more sophisticated, maybe they want something like Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, or maybe they want something like the CBS Building, designed by Eero Saarinen. Or maybe they want something super traditional like what they might get from Robert A.M. Stern. A few adventurous people might want something wilder, like Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim in Manhattan or John Lautner’s house for Bob Hope in Palm Springs.
What kind of people want a Frank Gehry building? I asked him. Are they seeking a display of design, wealth, power? Or do they desire a structure that seems to ignore all those socially ambitious visions: something that soars like a bird’s wing or an airplane or a sailboat or a butterfly, something truly different?
Our conversation took place during a social visit at his house in Santa Monica—the house that featured random surfaces of plywood and chain-link fencing, the house that his neighbors hated probably because they thought it would destroy their property values. I have to admit I was not immediately charmed by the design of the residence. It seemed unfinished—maybe what Gehry intended—and it didn’t seem friendly or inviting. Santa Monica in those days was suburban, neighborly, family- and kid-oriented. What was this punk rock house doing there?
Once inside, I began to think differently. The interior had that cozy feeling you associate with a family house. The kitchen, where every family lives, was open and functional. The upstairs bedroom for the owners was warm and romantic, just what you would want, and the kids’ rooms were playful, comfortable, loving. After some small talk, we discussed how Gehry works with clients. I recall him telling me this:
I have a standard way of working, and if they can accept this, we always have a good relationship. First, I ask, What do you want to do in this space? Is it a library, a museum, a residence, an art gallery, a garage, an office? What’s the “program”?
The second thing I say: Tell me about the emotion you want to feel… I will deliver a building that meets your program and respects your emotional goals. I will deliver both, and on budget.
When Alta Journal was launched in the fall of 2017, we chose Frank Gehry as the cover subject for our premier issue. I interviewed him at his Playa del Rey studio, surrounded by models and sketches. He was a creative celebrity, an artist, somebody who had changed the world. And he was a Westerner, a Californian. Not a native (he was born in Canada), but a person who had put his stamp on the city of Los Angeles. We spoke at length about his career and buildings.
This spring, I wanted to reconnect with Gehry and see what he was up to. I had just returned from visiting his Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, which was built by the luxury goods company LVMH to become a showcase for art and culture. It’s a remarkable building situated in the Bois de Boulogne, the central park of Paris.
On the one hand, it seems as though an alien spaceship had landed in a forest. On the other hand, the structure has powerful emotional grandeur; it has the presence of a Notre-Dame. Its galleries show art very well, in terms of wall space, lighting, and the way visitors move through the rooms in a natural order. You are inside a Gehry cathedral of art.
I was curious how the LVMH project had developed. The French can be very traditional, even bureaucratic, but they also love a creative soul. So I asked Gehry if I could visit him for another interview.
He is now 96 years old. We met in Santa Monica at his current house, which he designed in collaboration with his son Sam, who is also an architect. You approach the home from a quiet, tree-lined street. The front door appears after you pass through a garden. The house has high ceilings, with unpainted wood beams, and is filled with light. Gehry has aged since my previous visit, but his mind sparkles, and he was as sharp, delightful, cunning, and warm as ever during our two-hour conversation. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
This interview appears in Issue 33 of Alta Journal.
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Will Hearst: It seems like the people who have hired you never complain. The complainers are people who didn’t hire you. Maybe they were afraid. Maybe they had an image that you’re going to do some grandiose thing. But the people who actually wrote the checks, they don’t complain.
Frank Gehry: It’s because I’m a good listener, so I listen to a client. I don’t just come in with the first funny idea and present it. I spend time talking to them and trying things and getting them involved in the process. So they’re making decisions with me.
When we talked 20 years ago, I asked you, “How do you get clients to build these unusual buildings, these fantastic buildings?” And you said, “Oh, I have a very standard way of working. I ask the client, ‘What’s your program, and how do you want to feel?’ And I’ll deliver that, but don’t tell me how it looks. That’s what I do.” This is what you told me.
It’s not quite like that. I usually know them. It’s about delivery. It started when I was a kid at USC in architecture. Harry Birch, I think, was his name. He was the professional-practice teacher. And professional practice is really important, except in the curriculum at that time, it wasn’t treated that way. And so we had only one hour a week with Birch in professional practice. That’s what they did. About third or fourth year, I was walking through the patio at the school, and he stopped me. He said, “Frank, I’ve been watching you, and I think you’re going to do fine. I’d like you to promise me one thing.” I said, “OK.” He said, “I want you to promise me that whatever project you accept, you deliver.” And so I got that.
I do know that people who go to the Disney Concert Hall say the acoustics are fantastic.
They are.
When did you get so interested in technology?
I always was.
I didn’t know that. There’s a side gallery that you can visit at the LVMH that shows the construction technique of that building. It’s like a ship. I read somewhere that you use some software that no one has used to do all these complicated shapes and forms.
We use aircraft industry software from Dassault called Catia. It works perfectly. We created a company with it and then sold the company.
Were you really always interested in technology? I think of you as an artist with sketches, using pencil and paper. Not software.
I’m interested in delivering.
ATTENTION TO DETAIL
When I look at a successful building, I think to myself, “OK, there’s this beautiful form, and there’s some program that’s being done in the building,” but there are a lot of little boring details like, “What’s the lighting? Where are the bathrooms? Where’s the parking?” So you’re not designing just a pure form…
Right. How thick is the beam that holds it up? And what’s it made of?
Is that something that interests you, or do you just delegate that to junior staff?
We have a team, and we work together.
These can be very small details: how the bathrooms work, how the elevators work. There’s a lot of boring mechanical stuff—
Yeah. It’s boring. I can be a micromanager, but not in a bad way. You have to deliver. Right?
PROUST AND PARIS
Let’s go back to the LVMH building. Another thing about it is that there are very few stairs. It’s mostly escalators. So it’s a very easy building for somebody who’s disabled. It is a vertical building, but it’s very easy to get around. And I also thought the art looks great, particularly the big David Hockney exhibition that was up when I visited.
I haven’t seen that Hockney show, but David called me. I’ve got to go.
I feel like there’s a boat metaphor in that building. On the lowest floor, there’s even a basin, a fountain, with water coming down.
Well, I knew the site because I read Proust, and a lot of Proust happened in the Jardin d’Acclimatation.
And so Monsieur Arnault [LVMH’s chair and CEO] asked me to get in his car and go look at a site where he wanted me to do a museum. We arrived at the Jardin d’Acclimatation. I burst into tears. It’s such an iconic place for me.
Did he just call you up and say, “I’m Bernard Arnault, and I’d like to talk to you about a building,” or…?
We’d had a couple of meetings previously that didn’t go anywhere on something else. He had a guy, an adviser, who said, “You need to see this museum in Bilbao.”
You told me once that somebody wrote that the Bilbao museum is better than the art inside. And you said, “Go get some better art.”
Maybe…but Bernard came to L.A., and he came to a concert at Disney Hall. He sat next to me with his wife, who is a concert pianist. She’s Canadian like me. And so she and I are bonded.
AN ALTA BUREAU
When I lived in Santa Monica many years ago, I went out to the California Science Center near USC, where you designed the Air and Space Gallery. I’m a pilot. I like airplanes. And I remember thinking, “It’s a really good exhibition space.”
But they don’t use it. Do you want to put an Alta Los Angeles headquarters in that building?
I would love to. What are they doing with it?
Nothing. It’s used as storage. I am trying to turn it into a jazz club.
CUBES TO FORMS
What are you up to these days?
We’re doing a house for a new client. Do you want to see that model?
[Gehry shows me a bunch of translucent cubes. They’re arranged in a jumble, but each cube represents a “space” in the house. The process of assembling them is called massing.]
Do you always start this way, with just the massing? Everybody tells me that you do, like, 20 models before you do the house.
Yeah, I do a lot. This is how I engage the client. This is how I get them in.
Frank, this is just a bunch of blocks… There are no windows, there are no doors, there’s no entrance. You’re just doing this massing.
Yeah, but here is the property line, and this is the driveway.
OK. All right, I get it.
Because you come in here, and that’s the garage. This is the entry. He’s a developer. He wanted his own office. She wanted a dining room, a living room. She wanted the kitchen. She wanted to be able to hang out, have a hangout place in the kitchen.
A lot of people live in their kitchen.
And this is the living room, and that’s the dining room. This is their bedroom and closets. And this is their daughters’. There are two of them. So they have their bedrooms. They don’t really live there, but they come often. So they have their own bedroom.
But is this a conceptual model, or is this a model of what you think the house will look like in elevation?
This is a conceptual. So I can get them to this point where they understand how it works. See that little figure?
Is that to show scale?
I show them the lot, and I show them how the building fits on the lot. Now we’re at the stage where we’re going to say, “What shapes are these?” But at least they understand that I’ve listened to them. I have listened to everything, and they can see that. They can see that I’ve listened.
And so now it’s easy to make a form out of it. And I will do several iterations. It’s not very complicated. And what kind of roofs they want and things like that.
That’s very interesting. I worked with a firm in New York when I was remodeling an apartment…and they told me something: “You need to look at the floors and the ceilings when you look at a building.” And I thought, “I don’t look at any of that,” but they did. And it made a big difference. They made me aware that there are subtle things that give a room its feeling.
A HOUSE ON SUNSET
I want to go one more time back to this. If there’s a client that you don’t work with well, is it because they don’t listen or because they want to be the architect…instead of you? What’s the chemistry between you and the client?
I’m open if they’re nice people. If they’re friendly, well-intentioned, then I work with them. I don’t do many houses anymore.
You did some when you were younger.
Those are hard.
Why are they harder?
Because there are husbands and wives.
They don’t agree?
If they don’t agree.
[Gehry motions back to the blocks he was showing me before.]
So the dark blocks are the husband, and the light blocks are the wife?
The husband is a real estate developer and a really good one. The wife just loves horses. She has 10 or 12. This piece of land is on Sunset Boulevard where houses can have horses. So there will be horses.
What a great locale.
I said, “If the horse came up into your bedroom, would that be OK?” She said, “I’d love it.”
You told me something years ago: “The client I don’t like is the client that doesn’t know what they want.”
Well, I don’t mind that as long as we eventually get to a conclusion. But if they get arbitrary, then it becomes different.
So, if you want to be a good client, it’s OK to have strong opinions, but tell the architect what they are. Don’t tell them how to do the building.
Absolutely.
DISNEY HALL DIFFICULTIES
Let’s talk about one of your bigger projects: Disney Hall.
Disney Hall was difficult because… There’s always a contractor on the board of these organizations. And they didn’t trust me. And they presumed that I didn’t know how to do this building.
And this contractor was one of the bigger contractors in L.A. But they did everything wrong. They wouldn’t believe my process. And that went all the way through the project.
But I bonded with [then-mayor] Dick Riordan. He and I used to play hockey together. So we were friends.
The Canadian connection.
And in the middle of this appears another architect. I knew him, and he had the ear of Riordan, and he wanted to take the production drawings away from me. I didn’t know what he was up to. He took me skiing; we had fun. One day, I get a call from Riordan. He says, “I need to see you right away.” I go to his house; he greets me at the door, outdoors. He starts walking me. He said, “You son of a bitch. You don’t know what the fuck you’re doing. You’re going to screw this up. It’s going to cost us millions.” And I’m looking at him. I wonder, What the hell is he talking about? Anyway, it was this guy that’s convinced him that I didn’t know.
So they fired you because you were over budget?
No. Because they thought I was stupid and didn’t want to admit that I couldn’t build this.
I’m amazed. I guess they did not believe that you knew how to build your own design. This Gehry guy only knows how to draw something. He’s just drawing on a piece of paper.
But they screwed up. They lost millions of dollars because of that.
It’s one of your most famous buildings. How did you get back in the game?
That’s all Diane. Diane Disney Miller. I hardly knew her. I used to see her at meetings and stuff. I knew her mother, Walt’s widow. And in the beginning, they didn’t believe in me, but she went to a board meeting when that mayor thing happened, after they fired me.
I am fired on Friday, and on Monday I get a different call. From Eli Broad.… He said, “I hope you’re not a sore winner.”
And I said, “What are you talking about?”
And then he said that Diane told the board, “You don’t get the money from the Disney family unless Frank does it.”
Why did she say that?
Because she had seen her dad screwed to the wall by the different Hollywood industry officials in the same way that didn’t believe in his creativity. She had $50 million to give. And she said, “I’ll give it when Frank says it’s OK to give.” And then we built it.
Yeah. These projects have a thousand parents. Now everybody claims, “I always thought it was a great idea. I’m best friends with Frank Gehry, he’s fabulous.” They rewrite the whole actual story.
DREAM HOUSE
I think it would be fun to work with an architect and do a house from scratch. Not just a remodel but a real—
I’ll do one with you.
It would be a great experiment. You know that famous movie, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House? Where they fight with each other over the whole thing. That might happen. I see that when we do remodels. One of us is in charge, and the other one is the deputy. And the person who’s in charge makes the final decisions.
No, no. Let’s go find a site.
Let’s go find a site. Yeah. Good idea.•
Will Hearst is the editor and publisher of Alta Journal, which he founded in 2017. He is the board chair of Hearst, one of the nation’s largest diversified media and information companies. Hearst is a grandson of company founder William Randolph Hearst.
