Don't Build, Rebuild by Aaron Betsky

Author:Aaron Betsky [Betsky, Aaron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2024-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

AN ARCHITECTURE OF DOING NOTHING

GEHRY‘S TEMPORARY CONTEMPORARY

“Don’t tell anybody, but I didn’t really do anything.” That was the aside with which Frank Gehry drew me into his orbit the first time I visited his LA office in 1983. He was referring to the project he had just finished: converting an empty old car barn—where the city of Los Angeles had once stored trolley cars—into the temporary site of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), which had been founded a few years back did not yet have a permanent home. It was meant to serve as a stopgap solution while the Japanese architect Arata Isozaki worked on the museum’s permanent home, which was to be tucked into the parking deck of a new cluster of high-rises. As it turned out, Isozaki’s building, not only because of its design but also because of its location, would wind up being less than successful, both functionally and aesthetically, while Gehry’s “temporary” building continues to serve the museum to this day.

Gehry’s do-nothing approach was largely the result of his limited budget, but it was consistent with his architectural style at the time. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, Gehry delighted in designing buildings that seemed half-finished. He either exposed the wooden studs that are usually hidden behind drywall and paint, or else clad them with sheets of plywood or corrugated metal. He also extended his forms with chain-link fence, a material ubiquitous in the perennially sprawling, half-finished, and always redeveloping Los Angeles landscape. In his own house, which was a renovation and addition to a Queen Anne–style bungalow in Santa Monica, he had exposed much of the existing structure while leaving out the wall coverings to create a rambling, open living space from what had been a set of separate little rooms. My favorite touch there was the repurposing of the asphalt driveway into the kitchen floor—easy to clean, Gehry’s wife Berta pointed out. Frank Gehry claimed at the time that Gordon Matta-Clark was his favorite architect.

So when Gehry was faced with the old car barn and a small budget, he was more than happy to leave the existing metal walls, brick and concrete block foundations, metal trusses, and metal roof not only in place but as exposed as he could make them, patching them up, replacing pieces only where necessary, and cleaning up and repairing existing skylights. He then considered what would be the absolute minimum needed to make the space usable as an art museum. New HVAC systems, plumbing, and electrical wiring used up most of the budget. Building codes required that he fireproof the columns and walls up to eight feet, so he clad them with the appropriate material and painted the new surfaces white. In addition, since the original car barn was actually composed of several buildings fused together, there were a few level changes, so Gehry created steps and ramps. Those additions resulted in a deck that became a natural place to gather and view the whole space. He painted the museum’s name on the facade.

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