Big Fish

There is often something very "fishy" about Frank O. Gehry, who won the 1989 Pritzker Architecture Prize, the Oscar equivalent in Film. An architect in his own right, he was sometimes more like a sculptor. And now he is even marching bolding into the rivaling sand of "design". That is my first impression when I have recently bumped into his latest design for Tiffany, which is reminiscent of his most celebrated motif - fish.

A devout believer of "architecture is art", Gehry openly admitted that artists like Brancusi had a more profound influence on his work than most architects. Perhaps that explains why most people find his architecture like a modernist sculpture. (By the way, I am completely thrilled by the fact that he also likes Alvar Aalto from the architecture world, for I am a big fan of this Finnish architect.) Gehry made a lot of “fish” in art as in architecture. Fish Dance (Kobe, Japan) is a prominent outdoor sculpture that by far overshadows the restaurant building itself.

Gehry's big fish is, on the other hand, functional in a most intriguing and ecstatic way. Take Barcelona Fish (Spain) for example. As a sculpture, his fish is too massive while as an architectural piece, it is too "fishy". I just wonder how he can accommodate the organic form to the geometric rules in the orthodox canon of architecture. No doubt that modern architects are rule-breakers, as much as the modern icon of the avant-garde in art. Loads of architects like Gehry and Zaha Hadid moved away from norms. They tested upon the limits of violating geometry.

As Gehry states, "I approach each building as a sculptural object, a spatial container, a space with light and air, a response to context and appropriateness of feeling and spirit. To this container, this sculpture, the user brings his baggage, his program, and interacts with it to accommodate his needs. If he can't do that, I've failed."

Recently, Gehry has been shifting from big to smaller fish. From Barcelona Fish and Fish Dance to his Fish Lamps, Pito Kettle for Alessi and Tiffany jewelries, I am not sure what's in the mind of this big big fish ;-)