Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Award winner to design local project
Gehry commissioned to work on Alzheimer's research center
By J.M. KALIL
REVIEW-JOURNAL
Frank Gehry tours the Walt Disney Concert Hall on May 14, 2003, in downtown Los Angeles. The architect has been commissioned to design a building in downtown Las Vegas.
Photo by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Two towers of a modernist building at Rasinovo Nabrezi in Prague, Czech Republic, are seen on April 3, 2004. The so-called Dancing Building was designed by architect Frank Gehry.
Photo by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Renowned architect Frank Gehry, the Pritzker Prize-winning creator of stunningly angular, metallic-skinned structures such as the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, has been commissioned to design a building in Las Vegas.
Widely considered one of the world's leading architects, Gehry will design the Alzheimer's disease research center proposed for downtown's 61-acre Union Park development, Mayor Oscar Goodman will announce at today's City Council meeting.
Gehry, who turned 76 on Monday, is scheduled to attend.
The mayor and Southern Nevada Wine and Spirits owner Larry Ruvo, who is financing the center, did not return messages seeking comment Tuesday, but sources confirmed Ruvo's commissioning of the architect.
Officials with the master developer of Union Park, The Related Cos., said they did not know Gehry had been retained but were aware Ruvo was speaking with the world's premier architects for the job.
"We're talking with Larry about locating the building in a sort of a gateway position on the 61 acres to create an iconic building with a world-class architect," Related Executive Vice President Marty Burger said Tuesday from his New York City office.
The possible design, materials, cost and other details remained unclear.
Gehry is the designer behind some of the most daring and experimental buildings of the last quarter-century, undulating structures that have been compared to everything from sailing ships and blooming flowers to poetic explosions of metal.
"People either love or hate Frank Gehry's buildings," said professor Arthur A. Ovaska of Cornell University's department of architecture.
"It's an architecture of private expression as opposed to the considerations for the public realm. But it probably won't be out of place there because styles already clash with each other in Vegas. It's probably an appropriate context. It certainly will bring more attention to downtown Las Vegas if that's what they're after."
Gehry's most recent projects, including the 1997 Guggenheim museum in Bilbao and the Disney hall in L.A., which opened in 2003, have been praised by critics as beautiful examples of postmodern architecture.
Known for their swooping curves, they are comprised of shimmering geometric shapes made of titanium, stainless steel or aluminum.
The architect's inspiration in designing Seattle's Experience Music Project interactive museum, completed in 2000, grew out of experiments with broken pieces of an electric guitar. The building, dedicated to Jimi Hendrix, even references the musician's "Purple Haze" in a glass sculpture along its crest.
In awarding him architecture's top accolade in 1989, the Pritzker jury compared Gehry to Picasso for his restless experimentation without fear of critical reprisal or failure.
"Refreshingly original and totally American, proceeding as it does from his populist Southern California perspective, Gehry's work is a highly refined, sophisticated and adventurous aesthetic that emphasizes the art of architecture," the jury's citation read.
Upon learning of Gehry's Las Vegas commission, Burger said, "This is only going to help what we're trying to do downtown."
Along with Ruvo's Alzheimer's center, planners have proposed the construction of several other structures in Union Park, the city's vacant 61-acre parcel southeast of the Spaghetti Bowl.
Among the proposals so far are a performing arts center, a baseball stadium, a new city hall and a condominium high-rise, all pieces of what Goodman calls an "urban village" to serve as the city's centerpiece.
Keith Mendenhall, a spokesman for Los Angeles-based Gehry Partners, LLP, said the architect was unavailable for comment Tuesday.
