Building Art by Paul Goldberger

Author:Paul Goldberger
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2015-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

Frank then thanked his mentors, and the Pritzkers, before concluding his talk in the same tone with which he began. “Since the announcement of this award, I have been asked many times by reporters what I intend to do with the money,” he said. “I have said, of course, that I am going to finish my house and tear down the construction fence.”

* * *

1 Frank was uncharacteristically, and unnecessarily, timid here. When the house was completed in 1986, the Wintons, observing that the hedge compromised the strong architectural dialogue between the two houses that they had hoped for, had it removed, to the benefit of both buildings.

2 The Wintons were exceptionally satisfied clients. They remained in the house until 2002, when they sold the property to a real estate developer, who divided it into three lots. The Johnson house and the vacant parcel sold quickly, but the unusual form of the Gehry house discouraged buyers. After two years of trying to sell it, the developer, Kirt Woodhouse, donated it to the University of St. Thomas. It was taken apart, moved 110 miles to a conference center the university owned in Owatonna, and reconstructed there in 2011. It no longer has the Philip Johnson house as an architectural foil and it is not sited as subtly as it was on the Winton property, but under the guidance of Victoria Young, a professor of architectural history at St. Thomas, the house was well cared for and became the only Gehry house that could be visited by the public. Unfortunately, this incarnation was short-lived: the university decided in 2014 to sell the land, and it put the house up for auction in 2015 with a reserve price of $1 million and a requirement that the winning bidder move it away.

3 The Broads hired an interior designer to furnish the rooms, so the inside of the house bears less resemblance to Frank’s original scheme than does the exterior.

4 While the house is absent from all books and published documentations of Frank Gehry’s work, it is included in a private list of projects maintained for internal use in his office, where it is described as “unbuilt.”

5 After its run at the Walker, the exhibition traveled to the Harborfront Museum in Frank’s hometown of Toronto, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the High Museum in Atlanta, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Houston, concluding its run at the Whitney Museum in New York.

6 Neither house was ever built. They would have been the only Gehry houses in either Colorado or the Hamptons.

7 The discovery of contaminated waste on the site delayed the project, and it was not ready for occupancy until 1991. Not surprisingly it quickly became known as the Binoculars Building. Chiat/Day remained for less than a decade: needing more space, it moved to other quarters in 1998. The building is now the Los Angeles base for Google.

8 Frank’s recollection is slightly different. He believes that the European trip came first,

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