Was This From The Onion?

NoLand Grab Reports on this article covering the expansion of Harvard:
Gehry states:

“There are architects who think first and foremost, ‘how can I make my building and my site the most prominent site there so that I can get noticed,’” he said. “That is not the way that any of us in the collaboration feel.”

Gehry also emphasized the importance of teamwork in the project.

“It was all communal and we all participated,” he said. “They wanted somebody like me to help them create a DNA for future buildings in the planning study, so that was my main role.”

If I were Gehry I would refrain from DNA references, since his buildings might evoke images of genetically modified frankenfoods wreaking havoc on the planet. I shudder to think of his garish, flashy lousy designs cluttering the grounds at Harvard. But considering the state of the that university, it might be fitting testament- a reflection high priced diploma mill, dumbed down curricula and platform for political correctness and anti-western agendas that it has become.

One reads his empty quotes about 'teamwork' and one wonders, is he so oblivious to reality that he doesn't realize the blatant hypocrisy of this statement - that there was no 'teamwork ' with the community for his wretched Atlantic Yards design, so that he appears to just be a stooge for whatever "message" a developer has hired him to convey. Maybe "teamwork" is for Harvard, but not for Brooklyn. Perhaps he knows that the press - the New York Times in particular has become nothing more than a conduit for the agenda of an out of touch elite, so his lies become as close to truth as a lie can become - unchallenged and unquestioned.

He's not so much an architect as a PR man for greedy developers. Perhaps that is what Gehry really does, gussies up bad designs, poor planning and destructive development in glitzy titanium and bright lights. But at this stage in his life, why would he do it? Maybe that's all he knows how to do. Maybe he realizes his designs are full of sound and fury, but signify nothing. Maybe he realizes at the end of the day he's not an architect.

We here, or actually me here, at the Knickerblogger think that Gehry's designs are already an eyesore, and that the so called taste-makers have no taste - and its just big, big case of the Empire State's titanium clothes. Within the next decade, I predict a glut in the market for recycled titanium.


PS after Gehry's less than stunning debut at MIT one would figure that the board at Harvard would know better, but then again maybe not.

from the article:
Masterpiece or Junkpile? Stata Opens Its Doors
The building’s residents have their own opinion, however. Natalia H. Gardiol G spoke for the majority (or possibly a very vocal minority) in an e-mail: “noisy. complicated. orange carpet. hello? ... I want my money back.”

Many say open spaces lack privacy (keep in mind Gehry values privacy, for himself)

The lab’s many open spaces have led, among some, more to a feeling of lost privacy than a noticeable gain in collaboration. Leigh Deacon, a laboratory administrative assistant, wrote that her location in one of the Stata Center’s open spaces was inferior to her office at LCS’s previous location in Technology Square. “My office at Tech Square might have been a bit of a hole... but I loved it. It was my hole. I could close the door,” she wrote. Another assistant also commented on the loss of privacy that results from working in such spaces: “I feel like I lost something very important -- a sense of my own space -- and a feeling of importance.

He also claimed to 'listen' to the professors at MIT and then went on to disregard everything they wanted - privacy, ordered design and the spaces that would allow them to concentrate on their work. He then arrogantly decided he knew how faculty could work better better than the faculty. This can very well explain his flippant attitude towards Brooklynites - he knows what's better for us than we do.