Frank Gehry is probably the most distinctive architect of his generation. His buildings’ sensuous curves and undulating planes puzzle and surprise, challenging our notion of how a building works.
What a dog will make of it all is anybody’s guess.
The 76-year-old designer of Bilbao’s Guggenheim museum and the Disney concert hall in Los Angeles has turned his attention to a humbler structure: the kennel. During the unveiling of his design for a $100-million Las Vegas Alzheimer’s centre, a typical structure of contorted steel and uneven blocks, he took part in a charity auction. Bidders, carried away with the notion of a Gehry-designed lifestyle, pushed bids to $350 000. For a kennel.
”I thought I was going to do just one, for $150 000 or $50 000,” he told the Los Angeles Times. When the closing bid came in, he was asked if he would design two. ”I was onstage — I couldn’t say no.”
The clients remain anonymous, though one is big, one small and both live in Las Vegas. Gehry will visit their current residences and meet their owners. ”He’ll look at the aesthetics and, if the dog doesn’t bite, he’ll pet the dog too,” said the businessman behind the Alzheimer’s centre, Larry Ruvo. Will the kennels be wrapped in titanium, Guggenheim-style, or include a feature common to Gehry’s work and dogs’ lives: chain link fencing? He couldn’t say. ”I can’t start until I meet the dogs.” – Guardian Unlimited Â