"More Frank Gehry I Love to Hate" a Los Angeles Travel Page by tpal

I never would have expected my involvement in Virtual Tourist to lead me to such unanticipated vistas...and mostly it has little to do with the view.

As Carol and I prepared for our latest visit to Los Angeles we discovered a wonderful resource, "Architecture + Design LA" by Michael Webb. The skinny little book provides a short one paragraph synopsis of all the great (and not so great) buildings and design resources in Southern California. This was perfect for a couple of architecture junkies like us.

In anticipation for tour of Santa Monica we came across this entry:

"Former Chiat/Day (1984-91, Frank O. Gehry & Assoc.) A major gift to the street: bowed white decks, copper forest, and-as portal and centerpiece-monumental black binoculars by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen..."

Now, as you may know, I am not much of a Gehry fan but this sounded intriguing...so off we went. After a few missteps we were there and my reaction was, "What the h*## is that???" Before us was a strange assemblage of architectural oddities. To the north was a sleek white boat shaped structure which was "nice" looking although not inspiring. Next to it, to the south, was a huge four story tall pair of binoculars that seemed frankly silly but what the heck...this is LA. Finally, next to these was a structure clad in Frank Gehry signature style metal panels, albeit these were copper rather than stainless steel.

This, apart from the cartoonish spy-glasses, seemed the oddest of all. Rather than Gehry's more recognizable style of flowing, undulating, waving, curving, twisting...bored yet...me too, this was much more angular. But, what seemed particularly unsatisfying were the branches of the "copper forest". Rather than evoking an organic structure, they seemed to look like the kind of temporary braces hastily nailed in place to prevent the imminent collapse of the roof.

Now maybe it's just me, but once again I must say, "What were they thinking??".

I started this tip by talking about the "unanticipated vistas" that VT has led me to...this is surely one. It really doesn't matter what I think of this project. Ultimately, everyone will judge for himself. What I enjoy the most about something like this is discovering what is behind this idea.

After leaving the so called "gift to the street" feeling simultaneously fascinated, confused and annoyed, I decided to do some research.

Starting with the binoculars...it seems this was part of Frank Gehry's continuing effort to blur the line between architecture and sculpture, although I'm not sure why this is a good thing. In regards to art you should know that I am more of a "I know it when I see it" kind of guy. With that in mind, my first thought was "these guys must make binoculars"...wrong again. In fact this was art and probably "important" art. Turns out Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen are world renowned artists and quite famous for making ordinary objects big...really big. They have created a giant safety pin, an eraser for really big mistakes and even a boat shaped like a huge Swiss Army knife with its tools opened and complete with oars.

The more I surfed for the works of Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen the more I began to enjoy them. As public art goes this is pretty entertaining stuff. Most of the works are placed in interesting settings and have at least some pop art edge to them. On the other hand, the binoculars seem to be forced into too tight a spot and are frankly a bit too realistic. Alas, I have yet to discover why they envisioned binoculars as the centerpiece for this building as this building was built for the advertising agency Chiat/Day.

It should be said that the Chiat/Day advertising agency is big time. They were the creative minds behind the 1984 Superbowl launch of Apple's Macintosh computer and everyone's favorite...the pink Energizer bunny! The firm's leader, Jay Chiat, seems to be described as being somewhere between a maverick genius and a techno-tyrant. In a 1999 Wired Magazine article titled "Lost in Space" the concept for the ad agency and the building was described as "...a bold experiment in creating the office of the future. There were no offices, no desks, no personal equipment. And no survivors."

Jay Chiat's vision was to create a truly "virtual office". Employees would no longer have furniture of their own, personally assigned computers or phones or, for that matter, personal work space aside from a grade school style locker. The whole Wired story is a fascinating read. The relevant part to my story is the introductory paragraph which begins:

"In the end, the employees of the TBWA Chiat/Day advertising agency did what former boss Jay Chiat had wanted them to do all along. They got the hell out of the office.They finally cleared out last September, moving to new digs down the road and abandoning the Frank Gehry-designed binocular-shaped building in Los Angeles where Chiat, five years earlier, had first unveiled his cocky attempt to tear down the walls of the American workplace."

Ultimately, "what they were thinking" turns out to be pretty complex. The real story of this project was happening inside. Now it is up to a new resident to do what we all must do...adapt. We may never know why Frank Gehry matched these structures to Jay Chiat's concept but it sure led me down an unexpected path.

Thanks Frank...and thanks Virtual Tourist!