If One Meets an Architect, Slap Him

15 June 2006 | Category: Architecture Rumbling
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After finish reading the article on Slapping an Architect, I’ve come to realize that why I always have this dejavu feeling during presentation.

But, as Bob Geldof says in the new documentary, The Sketches of Frank Gehry, architects have a lot to answer for. No wonder architects all seem to be in long-term therapy. To paraphrase Geldof paraphrasing Evelyn Waugh, “If one meets an architect at a party, one’s first duty should be to slap them.”

And indeed, a slap in the face of straight edges everywhere is the work of Gehry, who does to steel and aluminum what someone else might do to a crumpled piece of paper. There is beauty in chaos, but there is also ugliness, and as some of the people interviewed in the film note, many of Gehry’s designs are extraordinarily ugly.