Frank Gehry: roofing, wrapping, and wrapping the roof

Abstract

Frank Gehry's work has taken the architectural stage worldwide. Without theorising his work, Gehry has produced a sensible architecture that deserves serious examination. In many ways, his work speaks for the present problematic state of architecture; the long standing relation of architecture to sculpture and other forms of artistic creativity; architecture's relation to its own history; the impact of telecommunication technologies on architecture; and the aesthetic implications of the commodity fetishism for architecture. Reflecting on these issues, the main intention of this essay is to demonstrate the perme ation of the 'culture of building' in Gehry's architecture, in particular the Semperian discus sion of the tectonic relationship between the elements of roof and enclosure. The paper also invokes Gottfried Semper's discourse on theatricality to demonstrate the way Gehry's architecture appropriates the present culture of spectacle. This much is clear from Gehry's shift from regionalism for the montage of fragmentary forms, and the theatricalisation of architecture where the element of wrapping defies the tectonic but also reminds us of the essentiality of the rapport between a constructed form and the clothing.