Gehry in Brooklynighton

Frank Gehry's Proposed Design for Brighton, England

Gehry on Brooklyn (USA):

"We're trying to understand what is Brooklyn, what is the body language of Brooklyn, and trying to emulate it without copying it. Copying it would trivialize it."

Gehry on Brighton (UK):

Gentility gets a look-in, though: he has remained true to the idea of Victorian ladies being blown along the seafront with billowing dresses. "One thing that impresses me is the Victorian character of the town," he says. "I've got this picture of the maidens in their floating dresses in Brighton on the wall of my office. It's a kind of inspiration and the towers now do look as if they relate to that." The towers are each 24 storeys and 250 feet high.

I realize that Gehry is known for his designs rather than his words, but when you compare what he says about his new design in Brighton, England to his new design in Brooklyn, New York, his words come across as either a disrepectful con of his audience, or great hubris and belief in the unerring rightness of his artistry: really superficial thoughts presented as profound art. Look at the smugness with which he presents them in this video. And I like a lot of this guy's work.

The form of the towers in Brooklyn, Gehry says, come from trying to understand the buildings of Brooklyn. And the form of the towers in Brighton come from trying to understand the buildings of Brighton. But anyone other than Gehry would say the towers look a lot more like each other than anything else in either place.

We're told that "copying" Brooklyn would trivialize Brooklyn, but apparently it's okay to copy your own work, as long as the British Victorian towers specific to Brighton also express the body language of Brooklyn.

Brooklyn critics of the sheer height of Gehry's Atlantic Yards project should note that Gehry didn't want towers in Brighton:

Gehry said that he had never wanted very tall towers, but that he was urged to do so by the Government's architecture watchdog, CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment). However, he chose to slash the height after winning the competition. "From the beginning, I thought that higher buildings were out of scale with the community," he said. "Then we discovered that there was a price premium on building taller anyway because of ground conditions on the shoreline. So in the end God had the final say, which is comforting." Now the scheme is only 10 per cent more dense than the city's Regency squares and terraces, he says - "so we're in the ballpark."

from Hugh Pearman, Sunday London Times