I think im on my way there, but i. ■y8there the United States has produced two extraordinary, influential major architects, both namedthis is not frank llt meet frank lloyd wright. I wanto, i in im sure you all know thaht frank won te pritzker prize for architecture which is the the award of the of theesign. Well that was in 1989 before you weren. Theres evelyn de■ broad. D ju i, i want to read to you the citation that was written at that time. Its very s only seven sentence. But i need to set the stage a little bit before i read it. In 1989, the and i should also preface this byim not an architecture critic nor an art architecture may get some. Oh, well, im going to leave. For about ten yearse pritzker prize was announced, the architecture profession, i say, was in some esthetic turmoil. Exhibition that had been mounted at the Museum Modern Art in 1979 by arthur drexle c transformation gardens in modern architecture. It was controversial, partly because ex for a very long times the longest serving curator in histy the of the museum. Said modernism inn exhibition architecture is dead. It is over. Some agreed. Some people didnag there was fistfights and things like that. And the profession changed and a number of architects began develop what came to be called postmodernismg to adapt neoclassicalthic styles o. And meanwhile, in santa monica, this g h b a of of around his 1920s bungalow and on a side street. And in santa mic being done. Sentences to you from the artistically it that too often looks backward rather than toward the future where retrospectives are more prevalent than risk taking. It is important to honor the architecture of frank o. And totally does from his populist southe perspective. Garys work is a highly refined and sophisticated and adventurous esthetic that emphasizes the art of our architecture, art critic is here. His sometimes conar arresting bf work has been various iconoclas, rambunctious and jury, in makins award, commends th resspirit ths buildings a unique expren of contemporary society and its ambivant values always open to rimention. He has as well, a sureness and maturity that resists in the same way that picassoid, being bound either by critical acceptanceccess. His buildings are juxtaposed collage edges of spaces and material■h■risles that make uses appreciate of of both a theater and backstage which simultaneously reveal. Th the prize is for a fefrank was about 60 at the tim. The jury hopes mr. Gehry will view it as encouragement for continuing an extraordinary work in progress, as well as for his significant contributions thus far to the architecture of the 20th century. While. So slow, i never read that luxury. Thats why i read it, because i have two questions. One. Did you believe it . Then, and do you believe it now . No, no. You didnt believe. Its not about it was for me. It wasnt. I was interestedn was going on in architecture. I was very interd talking about because we were coming out were coming out of wars and modernism and building is by breyer■u and except for frank wright and everything was kind of cold andknow, these are all y prise and the culture wasnt that it was. It was heading for all kinds of chaos. So. I looked at it. I remember the i remember the show at moma, the drexler show, and it was very powerful. If anybody had seen it, it was it was really was you could just for the rest of your life. And some of the architects started going down that rabbit hole. I was at a conference with a lot of them, a lot of my friends. So michael graves1 and more thn two were philipnd group that tie that philip put the little twirly sitting top of the at t. It was as a result of some the s were doing what we ended up calling postmodernism, because the show drexler show of seductive. Like you just you could it. What was seductive warm and friy and you embrace saying and you know, it didnt. But it had nothing do at the time. We were living in it. D so details. Details of detailsso it worked , but,■e you know, it generally couldnt go there because it was expensive to do it. I was at a conference with all of those guys and i remember i got, i had my 15 minutes of i id backward . Its like, why cant we . We . The world is moving. Theresr■o airplanes and all kis of movement boatst we find a ws our time. There must be something thatstn de with. I remember ending it by saying, ■. Cant, maybers before man to fish because i had been studying japanese woodcuts by hiroshi god. One when you started in ichitecture . When i did in the fifties, it was right after theso the the gm a pile build a small house of beautiful houses with the tommy mats and a little wooden structure. So my teachers at u were re doing that. And it was pretty seductive. So i got involved with japan and so i hiroshi guess would cut some fish interesting to me for some reason and i express movement 300 billion years before man why dont you look at that for inspiration. Well, they didnt, but iidand. And i got fish. Yeah, thats apologize for gettg fiy,■ but that was a law you probably have seen pictures of or been to franks in santa monica, which a sort of circa 20 Dutch Colonial pink stucco house. It was on the ocean. It was on ocean avenue, and ty0. So and it was a duplex in and there was land built kitchen and dining room to it. And so when you sat at the ■cni table or when you were in the kitchen, you were complete the facade when you were in the living room, you were looking out and it was you know, it was discussion between the past, how the neighbors hated me. They tried to get they went to the city, tried to down. Neighbor from across the road was standing there with me one day and he said, how could you ■n■do this to this neighborhood . And i said, where do you live . And they pointed across the road and i said, you have a chain link fence around your garden, dont you . ■fd, yes. I said, you have an old trailer in thed, dont you . I said, yes, but i said, you have a car jacked up on blocks in your front yard. Dont you . Its the matter with that. Give me a break. I it kind of worked said, i keet house for so reason, for the kitchen that you were mentioning, asphalt,spha, floor, like the driveway to the i remember the first time i went there, this must have been in the eht and i went there and i was sitting at the kitchenab skylige and a glass wall and. It what you just said. I was looking at the picture window on the pink stucco, looking into the living room of th and i thought the great, the great modern california cliche of architecture is indoor outdoor living. And there i outdoors, i was outdoors at the same nothing like nothing like richard or albert frey or it was not glass walls with sliding doors and so on. Well, i wasnt trying, actually. Just happen know my life with that in mind my personality wasnt trying to do ing a house for the famil cant help. Is there anything japanese about that esthetic. I dont i dont■a know. The warmth. Maybe. Maybe, yeah, i dont know. I did a fewi my very first housa was looks like it was designed by a japanese architect. Uh huh. Shulmans brother in law. They never built it,n]■ but. It. Its very japanese. And then the. Well, i actually played in the gogo ku orchestra at ucla. They department. And so thats the Imperial Court music. Uh huh. Theres this theres veryes andk in the imperial ho and. And so when disneyall was finished, came to disney hall. Come. But i have pictures of them sitting on stage at disney hall, and you could see theinfluence y concert hall. Uh, okay. Its pretty clear. Okay, let comes from somewhere. Everything. I mean, speaking of disney hall, enlets. Disney hall, the guggenheim, the Louis Vuitton foundation in paris. Ah, three pretty well known buildings these days. One thing that interests me about them is that they all, in some way riff on boats and sailing. And the disney hall is likelubih giant sails and and bilbao is a more industrial, you know, becas its up against the river in an Industrial Town and the Louis Vuitton glass building, those big glass sails ar sailboat or an at is this with boats . I know you you were a sailor and you blt o sailor. I am a sailor. You are aave a i have a boat and i designed a boat first. Yeah. Yeah. The foggy, right . Yeah. Yeah. So whats the, whats the attraction for for boats o motif in designing. Something theres clarity of kind. I dont i dont know. I just love it. I love the feeling of nature and blah, blah, blah. I get it. I can get romantic about it. Well, they they do have a sense of Graceful Movement to them. And yeah, i mean, one o ■theo. Well its again the fish. Yeah. Anthe fi. Boat. No, i dont. Okay. T movement expressly thats kind of interesting because when, when typically thinks of architecture as, as a solid and immovable ■ stat. Yeah but youre buildings are engaging movement. Yeah i in bilbao it was really engage the the city the river the bridge the all the things that were there. And so became aual partner on this on the river uh, has a variety of galleries and. I work hard at that because th to me. ■eso then i work, it worked out. Disney hall i work with. The l. A. Philharmonic for years. From my first meetings with her in thi wheheh to l. A. , he asked me to work on the hollywood bowl■. And he became y music teacher and spent a lot of time with him. World. And so and when the competition for disney hall came up, itas logical that i would enter. We never thought i wouldi did. It took a while. The not a musician, i im not a scholar orus fact, i just didh ■m not bogner guy, so i was a little nervous about but i just did it as a friend. But i like to meddleh music projects. For for physical pro design kind of of an opera set approach a b. I approach everything same way. ■ the the issue is, you to deliver. I feel very compelled to deliver on time, on budget. ■ and i do. Yeah ive got a great track record, bute where do you start . Whats tre doing. Thats right. But what do you this is that all. I met the i met with ernest. I met with people theclear. We saw buildings that were already a concert hall that were built that weren very successful, like new■ york, like wherever, san■7 francisco or thy were lacking. So this is country. And and we really got into it usicians and with with. I about with the composers, with the conductors, with the. So its a central thing. Mean you got, its not a minute. Yeah. A. Were okay with. Something like disney hall or bilbao which are know, sort of at the peak of time. Is there anything about either of those buildings tha1. T you would change . Youd like a do over on . I, i think disney could be simplified a little bit bit, but. Its not as complicated as it looks. Its just wings are just the them curved. Its a box and the and its a box that has a lowertra part ane part. And the balconies. So its all pretty much proscribed. How you put it together and how it connects with the , musicians do they fel part of it the biggest problem in designing a concert hall is the relationship between audience and, the performer, and thats the same in theater. And if if a theater person you walk into a stage and you see the audience, you know pretty quickly for the year, theyre same in music so we constantly look for for that for instancetheres the stage is up we we got vito out for an opera pit orchestra pit which was too bad so this last rheingold i had to sort fabricated an orchestra pit compromised of the sound its its not easy to do opera in snaloi an o. But little concert hall Daniel Barenboim for divine orchestra, israelipalestinian israelipalestinian. I got involved with ithat it as a gift to them because it was i was upset about what israel was doing andha to. Thats my politics. Forget getbut until its an exig warehouse in berlin so i could couldnt hang seats on the on te that was i couldnt do it. I ended up having a floating y done that andbonkers. Fantastic. Z ■4and were trying we want too e in hall. We want to float a balcony and upper level. The other thing we discovered by accident is that when the orchestras playing members are on theam floor as the audience. Its its crazy, but works okay. Huh. So the Colburn School that were doing across the road from disney right has that will have a thousand seats but first rose feet are on the floor with the has the floating balcony flying so you learn keep building on it. But the main thing is the dconnectivity and and i in all thyearsince disney hall has been open. People come up to me, i go to at concerts and tell me how that works. And the orchestra tells me so t. So thats it. ■s payoff. So that kind of a works and the, you know, when disneyl almost the famous actress came. Oh, god, i forgot. Or anyway, she came and walked on the stage. The building wasnt finished. And she said, frank, this up. So it does. Yo know, if i was down there, we would be happier with each now you want to know, you know. But its that those subtleties, that stupid art and new york, theyve just spent a lot of ing it they didnt completelyay but they didnt ge. To work. But the culture is liks exciti. Its like art is its like art galleries. Its like all the stuk at, we go to we love, we live on. Imakes us happy. Connection. The that sort of brings upning f the things about disney context. I mean, the stry cumbersome um Dorothy Chandler ut the design kindof disney halt so o into, into this big buildg into part of the conversation and makes the life on the street better and. Well, i designed the building across the road to the hotel. That one. Yeah, different one. Yeah, thats not. No, but i was able to talk to each other in a funny way. I think. But■c i think thats the issue , is connections, gh yeah. Making connections with people, uilding to your advantage. Its not hard to do. You just have to think about, you know, you mentioned Ernest Fleishman andg you about music and you im sure teaching him abo oum, how imptat in the development of a prmajor . In what way they goto you got to partner them. Theres several issues. One is thetnership to arrive at the conclusions so that it use building. So youve got ae other stupid ts budget. And wood, we come in on budget. People dont know that me but we deliver thats a major of my deal i do it unless i can do that. Theres a general conception that good architecture is expensive and trash architecture is cheap architecture means thae people, these people us people have to want to do it. You have to have an open mind because things are changing. Its nothme today as it was 20 years ago. So if you wantex ago, youre going to spend a lot of money to deal with the present. E exciting in music and theater and everything. Jazz i, im very involved with herbie hancock,z right right . ve been im you. You must have syou dont know ag with b recently that the that theres this impossible building tt. It costs 300 a square foot to build that building. And if you do an inflation calculation to the present, thats about 800 a square foot for a fantastic museum that people want g to. Okay. If you that to the San Francisco museum of modern is the brode museum, 1213. The big megillah, the l. A. County museum whly under construction. Thats 1800 per square foot, which is sort of, you 800. Youve to know something that we dont know. I do what . Okay. Im. You work with the i mean, its a construction. World we got involved with. I was doing a building in spain. Its a big fish. If youve been to barcelona, youve seen it next hotelthe the wn then it has wings. So when the body comes down and has the wing at that how to tht draw so e guy knows how to build it. Okay. So the developer wasritish guy, nice guy. Said, i love your bill. I want to buildt, b don do tha. I had an■ italian fabricator who i just started working with. I had just started investigating ibm and computer prostuff, and l w in to that so systems who buid jet planes, falcon jets in france and their software is called cartier very expensive ally expensive. One workstation was over 100 bucks and its hard for engineers to that. Massimo, the do this . I said, buy aso he buys one. He goes back to italy and he