ABSTRACT
Among participants in the MoMA’s 1988 ‘Deconstructivist Architecture’ show, Frank Gehry has come a long way in securing both institutional and public support. He is one of the few contemporary architects with little interest in theorising his work, and yet, he shares the neo-avant-garde’s tendency to renew architecture by borrowing from conceptual art.2 He is not, according to Francesco Dal Co, a passive recipient of ideas generated by contemporary artists, rather, he ‘understands that it is possible to “occupy” with architecture, the spaces that art is no longer able to dominate, assigning to architectural design the task of taking
to their extreme consequence.’3 Throughout long years of practice Gehry has pursued a self-imposed challenge, to avoid leaving any kind of personal signature on his work. He has taken every commission as an opportunity to generate something different. With the Disney Concert Hall and most recently with the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, however, he has introduced a major note into the noisy debates on architectural theories and practice. But what will be the next turn in his architecture after Bilbao?
