Be one of those pillars that stands up for our democracy in those brutal, harsh moments. Thank you for sharing with us. Thank you vgood morning. Thank you all for coming. Thank you for coming. Did i. I think im on my way there, but i. There the United States has produced two extraordinary, influential major architects, both named frank. This is not frank lloyd wright. This is the other one i didnt meet frank lloyd wright. I wanted to, but i in im sure you all know that frank won the pritzker prize for architecture which is the the award of the of the design. Well that was in 1989 before you were born. Theres evelyn de broad. And just to just to set i, i want to read to you the citation that was written at that time. Its very short. So only seven sentences. But i need to set the stage a little bit before i read it. In 1989, the and i should also preface this by saying im not an architecture critic nor an art architecture historian, so i may get some. Oh, well, im going to leave. For about ten years before the pritzker prize was announced, the architecture profession, i think you could say, was in some esthetic turmoil. The there was an exhibition that had been mounted at the museum of modern art in 1979 by arthur drexler, called transformation gardens in modern architecture. It was controversial, partly because drexler, whod been at moma for a very long time, is the longest serving curator in the history of the of the museum. He basically did an exhibition which said modernism in architecture is dead. It is over. Some agreed. Some people didnt agree. There was fistfights and things like that. And the profession changed and a number of architects began develop what came to be called postmodernism kind of trying to adapt neoclassical style or neogothic styles or whatever. And meanwhile, in santa monica, this guy had built a of of structure around his little 1920s bungalow and on a side street. And in santa monica that was unlike anything that was being done. So let me read these seven sentences to you from the citation in an 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. Gary refreshingly original and totally american proceeding as it does from his populist southern perspective. Garys work is a highly refined and sophisticated and adventurous esthetic that emphasizes the art of our architecture, that in a way an art critic is here. His sometimes contrary virtual but always arresting body of work has been variously described as iconoclastic, rambunctious and impermanent. But the jury, in making this award, commends this restless spirit that has made his buildings a unique expression of contemporary society and its ambivalent values always open to experimentation. He has as well, a sureness and maturity that resists in the same way that picasso did, being bound either by critical acceptance or success. His buildings are juxtaposed collage edges of spaces and material aisles that make users appreciate of of both a theater and backstage which simultaneously reveal. Although the prize is for a lifetime of achievement. Frank was about 60 at the time. 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 the. It was for me. It wasnt. I was interested in what was going on in architecture. I was very interested in what drexler was talking about because we were coming out of were coming out of wars and modernism and building is by breyer and except for frank wright and everything was kind of cold and and. You know, these are all very precise 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 seductive. It was you could just go there and slap it up and just do that 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 Graves and more than two were in philip and. It was at that group that time that philip put the little twirly sitting top of the at t. It was as a result of that show and some the other architects were doing what we ended up calling postmodernism, because the show drexler show of postmodernism was very seductive. Like you just you could just go in those buildings and love it. What was seductive about it . You just get warm and friendly and you embrace saying and you know, it didnt. But it had nothing do at the time. We were living in it. And so details. Details of details. So it worked for some people. But, 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 said, why do we have to go backward . Its like, why cant we . Why cant we . The world is moving. Theres airplanes and all kinds of movement cars, boats, rockets, whatever. Cant we find a way to express our time. There must be something thats that inspirational, that we can deal with. And i ended it. I remember ending it by saying, well, if you cant, maybe go back 300 million years before man to fish because i had been studying japanese woodcuts by hiroshi god. One when you started in architecture . When i did in the fifties, it was right after the war. So the the g. I. Came back from japan with a pile of information on how to build a small house of beautiful houses with the tommy mats and a little wooden structure. So my teachers at usc were were doing that. And it was pretty seductive. So i got involved with japan and so i hiroshi guess would cut some fish were particularly interesting to me for some reason and i said very architecturally they express movement 300 billion years before man why dont you look at that for inspiration. Well, they didnt, but i did. And. And i got fish. Yeah, thats how i got fish. And i apologize for getting fishy, but that was a law you probably have seen pictures of or been to franks in santa monica, which is a sort of circa 20, i think its Dutch Colonial pink stucco house. It was on the ocean. It was on ocean avenue, and they moved it in 1900 to that. So and it was a duplex in and there was land beside it. So i just built kitchen and dining room to it. And so when you sat at the dining room table or when you were in the kitchen, you were looking at the house 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 get it knocked down. Neighbor from across the road was standing there with me one day and he said, how could you 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 . He said, yes. I said, you have an old trailer in the backyard, dont you . I said, yes, but i said, you have a car jacked up on blocks in your front yard. Dont you . I said, whats the matter with that. Give me a break. I anyway, it kind of worked and i said, i keep it, i keep that house for some reason, for the kitchen that you were mentioning, asphalt, asphalt, floor, like the driveway to the garage. And i remember the first time i went there, this must have been in the eighties sometime when we met. And i went there and i was sitting at the kitchen table, theres a big skylight up above and a glass wall and. It dawned on me what you just said. I was looking at the picture window on the pink stucco, looking into the living room of the house. And i thought the great, the great modern california cliche of architecture is indoor outdoor living. And there i was, outdoors, indoors, looking at the indoors while i was outdoors at the same time. So i didnt look, knew 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. I didnt just happen know my life with that in mind my personality wasnt trying to do that. I was just making a house for the family. I cant i cant help. Is there anything japanese about that esthetic. I dont i dont know. Probably. The warmth. Maybe. Maybe, yeah, i dont know. I did a few japanese. I my very first house out of a was looks like it was designed by a japanese architect. Uh huh. It was for Julius Shulmans brother in law. They never built it, but. It. Its very japanese. And then the. Well, i actually played in the gogo ku orchestra at ucla. They had a ethnomusicology department. And so i joined that thats the Imperial Court music. Uh huh. Theres this theres very few pieces and musicians only work in the imperial household and. And so when disney hall was finished, i, the gogo crew came to disney hall. Uh, theyd never come. But i have pictures of them sitting on stage at disney hall, and you could see the japanese influence in the walt disney concert hall. Uh, okay. You can see it. Its pretty clear. Okay, lets just see it. Something comes from somewhere. Everything. I mean, speaking of disney hall, lets. Disney hall, the guggenheim, bilbao 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 like this big three masted schooner with giant sails and and bilbao is a more industrial, you know, because its its up against the river in an Industrial Town and the Louis Vuitton glass building, those big glass sails are like a like a sailboat or an impressionist painting. What is this with boats . I know you you were a sailor and you built own boat. And i were a sailor. I am a sailor. You are a sailor. What kind of i have 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 of esthetic motif in designing. I dont know. Theres 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 have they do have a sense of Graceful Movement to them. And yeah, i mean, one of the interesting things to me. Well its again the fish. Yeah. And the fish. So you fish from the boat. No, i dont. Okay. But theres the movement expressly thats kind of interesting because when, when typically thinks of architecture as, as a solid and immovable static. 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 a partner a visual partner on this on the river front. Uh, it also has a variety of galleries and. I work hard at that because thats a big deal to me. So then i work, it worked out. Disney hall i work with. The l. A. Philharmonic for years. From my first meetings with her in this, when he came to l. A. , he asked me to work on the Hollywood Bowl and he became my music teacher and spent a lot of time with him. And with the music world. And so and when the competition for disney hall came up, it was logical that i would enter. We never thought i would win, but i did. It took a while. I the not a musician, i im not a scholar or music. In fact, i just did wrangle with gustavo and im not bogner guy, so i was a little nervous about it. But i just did it as a friend. But i like to meddle with music projects. Youve done a lot of set designs for for physical productions. Do you approach the design kind of of an opera set the same way you approach a building. I approach everything same way. Got to whatever the the issue is, you to deliver. I feel very compelled to deliver on time, on budget. Ill let and i do. Yeah ive got a great track record, but like where do you start . Whats the you know what you were doing. Thats right. But what do you this is that all. I met with the i met with ernest. I met with the the Community People the program was pretty clear. We saw buildings that were already a concert hall that were built that werent very successful, like new york, like wherever, San Francisco or they were lacking. So this is around the country. And and we really got into it with the musicians and with with. I about with the composers, with the conductors, with the. So its a central thing. Yeah, but you get into it, i mean you got, its not peripheral. I got a minute. Yeah. A. Were okay with. Something like disney hall or bilbao which are both, you know, sort of at the peak of architecture of our time. Is there anything about either of those buildings that 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 stairwell and so i just made them curved. Its a box and the and its a box that has a lower part, orchestra part and, an audience part. And the balconies. So its all pretty much proscribed. Its its how you put it together and how it connects with the musicians do they feel 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 ways to improve that for instance disney theres 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 which compromised compromised of the sound and so its its not easy to do opera in disney hall because its not an opera house. But we did a little concert hall and, berlin for Daniel Barenboim for divine orchestra, israelipalestinian israelipalestinian. I got involved with it that it as a gift to them because it was i was upset about what israel was doing and that i wanted to. Thats my politics. Forget get me. But until its an existing warehouse in berlin so i could couldnt hang seats or balcony on the on the building because that was i couldnt do it. So i ended up having a floating balcony. We had nobody done that and its bonkers. Fantastic. And were trying we want to do one in disney hall in hall. We want to float a balcony and have an upper level. The other thing we discovered by accident is that when the orchestras playing members are on the same floor as the audience. Its magic 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 orchestra and it has the floating balcony flying so you learn keep building on it. But the main thing is the connectivity and and i in all the years since 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 how that works so that they feel it. So thats it. Thats the payoff. So that kind of a social connection. Yeah. And it works and theater too, you know, when disney hall was 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 works you up. So it does. You feel it, you know, if i was down there, we would be happier with each other. Now you want to know, you know. But its that those subtleties, that stupid art and new york, theyve just spent a lot of money redoing it they didnt completely get it they they got part way but they didnt get it. So gustavos going to have to work. But the culture is like theater. Its exciting. Its like art is its like art galleries. Its like all the stuff we look at, we go to we love, we live on. I think that makes us happy. Speaking kind of social connection. The that sort of brings up the idea of city planning and one of the things about disney hall is the context in which it exists. I mean, the street from a fairly cumbersome um Dorothy Chandler pavilion but the design kind of of disney hall sort of it just sort of like connects into, into this big building across the street like pulls it 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 i think thats the issue is, is connections, right. Yeah. Making connections with people, using the building to your advantage. Its not hard to do. You just have to think about, you know, you mentioned Ernest Fleishman and his teaching you about music and you im sure teaching him about other things. Um, how important is the client in the development of a project major major . In what way they got to you got to partner them. Theres several issues. One is the partnership to arrive at the conclusions so that it fits the way they want to use building. So youve got a picture of that and the other stupid thing is budget. And so. Knock on wood, we come in on budget. People dont know that me but we deliver thats a major of my deal. I wont i do it unless i can do that. Theres a general conception that good architecture is expensive and trash architecture is cheap. Good architecture means that the people, these people us people have to want to do it. You have to have an open mind because things are changing. Its not the same today as it was 20 years ago. So if you want to make 20 years ago, youre going to spend a lot of money and, waste time. You got to deal with the present. The present is exciting in music and theater and everything. Jazz i, im very involved with herbie hancock, right right . I think ive been im you. You must have some secret. You dont know about dealing with budgets because you were telling me recently that the that bilbao which was that. Oh, my god, theres this impossible building that. 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 to go to. Okay. If you that to the San Francisco museum of modern art, 1213 hundred dollars is the brode museum, 1213. The big megillah, the l. A. County museum which is currently under construction. Thats 1800 per square foot, which is sort of, you 800. Youve to know something that we dont know. I do what . Im not going to tell you. Okay. Im. No, its obvious. 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 hotel and the the body of the fish came down. Then it has wings. So when the body comes down and has the wing at that how to that draw so the guy knows how to build it. Okay. So the developer was a british guy, nice guy. He came to me, he said, i love your bill. I want to build it, but i dont know how to do that. I had an italian fabricator who i just started working with. I had just started investigating ibm and computer programing and stuff, and by accident, i fell in to that so systems who build jet planes, falcon jets in france and their software is called cartier very expensive really expensive. One workstation was over 100 bucks and its hard for engineers to pay for all that. Massimo, the guy from italy, says, how do i do this . I said, buy a workspace. So he buys one. He goes back to italy and he calls me a week later and he says, perfect, you. So we build. I mean, so its just a matter of searching out the technology. Theres stuff there i mean, cant you cant do you cant levitate but you know, you have to work with geometry and but theres a lot of flexibility. Theres a lot of room of people ask questions and and search for things and i think younger at im hoping younger people i have been teaching at yale for 20 years or so and every project i get them involved with doing music, concert halls and and so been a lot of of students that have worked with me now that at least have trained at that i dont know where it goes i dont know. Theres a project youve been working on for at least a decade, i would imagine that thats in some respects quite different from from what weve been about, but in some ways fits and is the l. A. River for the Los Angeles River, which runs from the valley to down roughly long beach and ocean is 51 miles long. Its a concrete channel the the concrete was poured in the beginning or early in the 20th century because its its essentially a flood channel in l. A. Las flooding today. It is much hopeful. Yeah that essentially. Yeah it is a flood channel which is why the concrete is there because things have grown up around it and. You dont want to flood. Tell us about that project. What do you what do you concocting for the 50 miles of l. A. River . Two things. One is that theres groups of people and theyre very brilliant thinker. I forget his name, but. Developed a program called friends of the Los Angeles River and they wanted to take the concrete out and make it a garden landscape. Very beautiful idea. Wow. 51 miles of gardens. And whats wrong that . What do you take it out . Godzilla comes to only 2 of the time. Thats the problem. Nobody believes it. But 2 of the time. Godzilla. And if theres the garden landscape, it displaces hundreds of homes. Yeah so we cant put up with that. So whats the solution . One of the solution theyve been building parks over freeways in parts of the country, and theyre not theyre not cheap, but theyre not out of line. You could build a park across a freeway. So weve been studying the area all of all of this work by. The way is philanthropy. I dont get paid it. So i got into it. And the the speaker of the house, anthony rendon, is very intelligent guy. And he he wanted to do. So. I said, why dont we the neighborhood south of l. A. Kids growing up there, have a ten year shorter life span. This is fact you could read it. You can get it but you cant hide it. They live ten years shorter because they dont have open space and they got the 710 freeway breathing, killing them. So thats a reality. Kids are dropping out of school or its its its a mess. Nice. Oh, man great people. Fantastic you know so weve decided to make a Cultural Center along the its ten years the the the they gave us a piece of land to do it and then we found well that was a parking lot for county vehicles and after we had the design we couldnt use it anymore because the county vehicle had to go there. But parking anyway. So finally we got through all of that. Weve a little street. Its going to have an art program from like involved. Weve got gustavo with youth orchestra, l. A. , which is the outgrowth of he came from from venezuela, which is what we did in inglewood. We remodeled a Bank Building, knocked the park for a dollar 98. I mean, it was really. Yeah. And so we can build this street and we can have dance and all that stuff. We finally got it cleared and that is janice hahn has gotten approved and were clear. We only have weve got most of the money. We only have to raise 50 million more all of our time. Im not im not fundraising. So were going to do it with no problem. I mean, to have your name put on the street, that cultural mama mia. Yeah, its no problem problem. So i think thats a goal. And its going to be the park part. We wanted to cover two pieces. The its at the confluence of the rio hondo and the l. A. River and so weve shown how and theres a v, so theres a little area thats parking lot that we can get and a park and we could cover part of the river and on the l. A. River and part of the river on the real hondo. And we could get a 40 acre park, 40 acre, 40 acres in an area where theres no park. And we have renderings of and its beautiful. Its easy to do the cost. And its been approved by the corps of engineers is the cost is 800 million to save kids lives. Now i dont know its going to work i know if the world is going to do it, but its there the Cultural Center definitely will be built at will give some center and focus for that community its going to be interesting. Theyre going to have their own orchestra, their own concert hall, 500 seat concert hall. Theyll be able to do like weve been doing it in inglewood at the Bank Building, which is not i mean, that the extra to turn a Bank Building into, a concert hall was only two or 3 million and bingo, its now being used as a concert hall in that neighborhood. So it doesnt take much. They dont have to be fancy. We these are kids. Theyre rolling through it. And ive convinced abu dhabi, where im doing a opera house to build a concert for kids because the new leader, abu dhabi, sheikh khalid, is studying classical piano. So hes really it. And lang lang is his teacher. So lang lang, were all connected now, but i think i think, you know, if i make more excited about that stuff, yeah. And luckily i dont. Well i going back to your house in monica is chain link fence and plywood, corrugated metal. Its like not its not marble crystal chandelier, things like that. And its gorgeous. Its beautiful. Yeah. Assembly you and weve got a couple couple of minutes left but when you first came to to l. A. , were living here in the fifties, early sixties, you got involved in the art world. How important was that for you to work with artists. Well, i can. I cant remember how it all started. I would say seeing an architect here, like he had an art department, i forget the names of the artists, but i used to go to all of their their stuff. I got to know who i got to know was a Service Named glen luken. Who . You were right there. Thats a ceramic artist. So i was taking ceramics with glen lucas. And glen realized i was going to be a ceramics and and he was really sweet that we were we were kind of poor. So he put me into c architect lecture class at night and i was put in it with john kelsey. Who would be kelsey became kelsey lab that did the path a museum right and we were in that class for a year and we got skipped into second year architecture. Thats how it happened. Uh huh. And Craig Kauffman would had just come to sc and first year Craig Kauffman yeah, but we ended up at ucla. Yeah. And he was a knockout, you know. I mean, you couldnt. Yeah it was just exciting to be around him and was a lot of, a lot of activity with the art world and met billy on and it was like a wide open but ed moses was the connection for me. Uh huh. So he was crazy. Ed yeah, right. It was crazy. But did he did lead me to the promised land. Yeah, were, were of time