From a Facebook post by David Gerrold, science-fiction writer of some note and resident of Los Angeles:
If there is one architect I dislike more than Frank Lloyd Wright, it is Frank Gehry, the designer of the Walt Disney Concert Hall and other curlicued atrocities.
The man doesn’t care about how his buildings will fit into the space, how they will relate to their surroundings — which is why the concave mirrors on the Disney Hall had to be toned down because they were focusing the sun’s rays on surrounding buildings and causing serious heating problems.
His buildings make no sense to the eye. They’re like a dropped pile of saucepan covers. And once inside the Disney Hall, it’s a beautiful maze. It’s too easy to get lost and forget which exit will get you to where you parked your car. You can’t find the exit and you always come out on the wrong side of the maze.
The first priority of a concert all is to have great sound. After that you design around that space.
A building should be more than a monument to the architect.
The jibe at Frank Lloyd Wright aside — I quite like Wright’s work myself, although I recognize that a place like Fallingwater is very impractical for the way most people actually live — Gerrold perfectly articulates my own feelings about Gehry. His work offends me in some deep, admittedly irrational way. I’m so glad that Gehry project proposed for just a few miles down the road from my house appears to have fallen through…
