Actually he has a reputation for keeping his projects on budget for the most part. Some have not been on budget, but in general his projects tend to be on budget, moreso the most Architects in general. He also established his initial career on commerical and residential projects. I am not sure what you mean by turning a profit–are residential projects supposed to turn a profit?
I can understand not liking his work, but you can’t deny he is influential in the field of Architecture. Personally as an Architect with 25+ years of experience I like his work and find his work interesting. Does it all work–no, but he pushes the boundaries. If I had my druthers and had the same type of clients I would love to do work like he does. I am proud of my built work, but if I am honest with myself it pales in comparison to the artistic merit of his work.
His work, although most people think it is a jumbled mass of thrown together curves, is actually very detailed and thought out. His firm also is one of the leaders in 3D technology relative to the CADD industry. He has a separate firm that deals just with the digital aspects of his work which is unique among architectural firms. http://www.gehrytechnologies.com/
I don’t think you can call Gehry’s later work postmodern. His Venice Beach House, yes, but that was built in 1986, at the height of the postmodern movement, and as you can see is quite different from the style he’s developed since then.
One of the things I like about his more recent work is that it’s hard to categorize, but I’m fairly certain it’s not considered postmodern. Postmodern architecture is distinguished by its “jokey” nature, which is usually in the form of references to specific, older styles of architecture. That’s a simplistic description, but it’s a useful one as kind of a shortcut to “getting” postmodern architecture. Take a look at the examples at wikipedia; you’ll notice a certain cartoonish quality most of these buildings have in common. Very 80s. I think an argument could be made for describing “Fred and Ginger” as postmodern, but even then he was beginning to look outside of architectural history for his reference points.
Postmodernism was a very specific reaction to Modernism (hence the name, obviously). Gehry’s style is just as much a reaction to postmodernism, and he has succeeded in moving beyond it, in my opinion. His style has just as much to do with deconstructionism, although it’s transcended that as well.
I would agree with this statement on both issues—most of Gehry’s work is not Postmodern, and I would also call most of his latest work De-Con as well, and much of it has indeed transcended it.
Slightly off: I just wanted to put in a plug for DMark’s Vegas site - it’s a great resource. I used it to prepare for a trip to Vegas a year or so ago, and it was invaluable.
Gehry, oh, Gehry… I honestly think he phones in about 75% of his work. So much of what he does is repetitive and impractical. But then again, he can do some really impressive stuff when he bothers to sit down and think out what a building is actually for. All three of the examples below are, I hope you can all agree, very attractive (but not all that wild) buildings.
That last one is probably my favourite piece of architecture, period. So very stylish, and the design actually makes use of conventional construction techniques. I’m curious how these examples have held up, though —there’s nothing sufficiently malformed about to make deterioration inevitable, but then again, with Gehry, you never know…
