
Frank Gehry started off building cities with his grandma - pseudolus
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/frank-gehry-started-off-building-cities-with-his-grandma-1.5491434
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ilaksh
I'm not an architect, but I have a fantasy about building a new type of city.

High density city centers have transport and other infrastructure largely
concentrated on one or two levels. This means that it is impossible for most
people to use vehicles because the streets cannot possibly accommodate so
many. So there are trains. Trains sort of work, but they are still quite
crowded and uncomfortable, and overall do not permit point-to-point travel and
are slow compared to direct travel by vehicle.

So my thought is, plan for an area that has several say 60 story buildings in
a group.

The basic idea is for tall buildings to be connected on multiple levels. For
example, if you have a type of roadway every ten floors, in sixty floors there
would be five elevated roadways. These would mainly need to handle small
single passenger automated pods, or anyway vehicles less than 1000 pounds.

This requires the architecture to cooperate in a way that is not possible
without sophisticated sharing of CAD designs.

Or it might be a type of cooperative enterprise to build a robust skeletal
structure for reservation group, which would then be filled in by individual
owners or tenants after the superstructure was complete.

Well, it's not entirely a new concept, since many people have had similar
ideas, at least in terms of multi-level cities.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
I am not an architect, and I've dreamed of building a new city for most of my
life (I'm 43 now).

I tried to build a startup to address this desire in 2017. We ended up
building something different, hopefully useful but far away from my initial
dream. [0]

I recently decided to give it another try [1], and applied to the "Apollo
Projects" program [2] just a few days ago. Hope to hear from them soon :)

[0]: www.fabrica.land

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtMybYBGCwc&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtMybYBGCwc&feature=youtu.be)

[2]: [https://apolloprojects.com/](https://apolloprojects.com/)

Edit: forgot to add one comment: tall (20+ stories) buildings are actually NOT
the best way to have good density and "livability" of a city center.

It's a long discussion, but just look at the monsters that Le Corbusier
(Radiant City [3]) and others tried to build in the past. Almost unanimously,
architects and engineers agree today that these are not the right paradigm to
build a city.

Great additional reads if you're curious: "Pattern Language" by Christopher
Alexander, and "The Death and Life of great american cities" by Jane Jacobs.

[3]: [https://99percentinvisible.org/article/ville-radieuse-le-
cor...](https://99percentinvisible.org/article/ville-radieuse-le-corbusiers-
functionalist-plan-utopian-radiant-city/)

~~~
ilaksh
Okay I am aware that many architects do not like tremendous skyscrapers these
days. However, my concept, which I have not fully specified, would be unlike
any existing design which they may correctly criticize.

Here is another very different idea I had before (which was criticized for not
being dense enough):
[http://runvnc.github.io/tinyvillage/](http://runvnc.github.io/tinyvillage/)

But I am really curious to know what sort of structures or design you prefer.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
That's interesting!

The ones I personally prefer are the ones that have been proven over decades,
or better centuries. Pretty much any city center in most small/medium towns in
Europe, for example.

Jan Gehl's Strøget in Copenhagen is, AFAIK, the best example of readapting a
large city to a proven, older model.

[0]: [https://www.architectmagazine.com/design/urbanism-
planning/j...](https://www.architectmagazine.com/design/urbanism-planning/jan-
gehl-copenhagen-and-the-trajectory-of-city-planning_o)

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elktea
Gehry is a great example of how architects have lost touch with what normal
people consider attractive or useful. I'm yet to meet anyone that hasn't
studied architecture that likes his buildings.

~~~
saeranv
I went to architecture school, Gehry is extremely unpopular amongst most
contemporary architects. He's considered more of an artist then an architect.

~~~
eumenides1
Are contemporary architects disliking his work a sort of counter culture sort
of way (because he is everywhere)? What are fundamental complaints against his
work?

Did Frank Gehry advance architecture in a way that people are standing on top
of his work (figuratively speaking)?

~~~
ethbro
There are generally two types of architects: white collar and blue collar.

White collar architects are artists, and spend their time designing. Then they
hand their sketches to structural engineers and say "Figure out how to build
this." These are generally the folks architecture magazines write about.

Blue collar architects are more engineers and tradespeople, and see success as
a building that fits the purposes of the client, in budget, in a pleasing way.
They're more likely to repurpose a historical form, if it's well suited for
the request at hand.

One of the central features of architecture meta is that white collars think
blue collars lack creativity and intelligence, and blue collars think white
collars are pompous pricks.

~~~
omosubi
Who do blue collar type architects look to for inspiration or guidance?

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thdrdt
Personally I like his forms. But I sometimes wonder if he is a good architect.
Maybe he should be called a great artist.

The same can be said about some website/app designers. Beautiful designs but
barely useable. Maybe those designers should also be called artists.

~~~
sgift
Have you lived in one of his buildings/have you insight if they really are
hard to live in/use? They look that way, but the outside of a building doesn't
necessarily translate to the same on the inside.

~~~
ethbro
I've worked in one, at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. The Peter
B. Lewis Building:
[https://weatherhead.case.edu/about/facilities/lewis/default](https://weatherhead.case.edu/about/facilities/lewis/default)

Among other problems: (1) no provision was made for the fact that Cleveland
gets snow and ice, leading to barriers for pedestrians to avoid their
evisceration via detaching ice sheets from the curved roof, (2) the glare off
the roof is focused straight down a nearby street @ 5pm, creating driving
hazards, (3) it's difficult to navigate internally from one side of the
building to the other.

Most star architects are hacks, coasting one step ahead of being made to
answer for the flaws of their previous projects. The more famous the
architect, the more they feel obliged to ignore basic design.

~~~
aphextron
I think this photo
([http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5PEXDshWZlA/UaTCV9uc1OI/AAAAAAAAAC...](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5PEXDshWZlA/UaTCV9uc1OI/AAAAAAAAAC4/C5J8rgybYlo/s1600/pbl_toward-
lake.jpg)) perfectly illustrates why this type of architecture is a literal
nightmare. It has no concept of its' physical surroundings or geography, it's
just someone's abstract fever dream plucked from the sky and plopped into a
setting where it makes zero sense.

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omosubi
Are there any Facebook engineers who worked in the Gehry building? How was it
working there?

~~~
efsavage
I spent time there on a few occasions. It is an interesting building in that
it is huge, but somehow it still feels kind of comfortable and localized. Kind
of like a shopping mall but without the walls, but the walls aren't necessary.

The park on the roof is _phenomenal_. There are thousands of people working
below you and you'd never know it, it's more like just being on a hill near
the bay.

