ARC 141 Paper 01

The sketch quality, referred to Frank Gehry, as “the tentativeness and messiness” should be clung to as a way of guarding against repetition.

According to Frank Gehry, “ We constantly go back and forth between models and drawings, because if one thing does not work, something else ends up working instead!”

Frank Gehry’s “untidy” designs depict some forms and structures, which translate from art, into architecture.

Looking at the sketch of the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain, one can clearly state that these drawings by Frank Gehry are exactly what Michael Graves calls “a referential sketch”, which is one of primary themes of architectural drawing.

There is a common misconception about Gehry’s work – they are built for the sake of their form. The truth is that these forms are built inside out. Frank Gehry also works a lot on Deconstructivism, which is the ability to propose a different view, a view that flaws are intrinsic to the structure.

What I noticed about Frank Gehry’s sketches is the fact that when I applied his method of sketching, I noticed that the structures in the sketches all seem to have a function, and are not, as some may say “a bunch of confusing squiggly lines”.

From the diagrams given and from the words of Gehry himself, we can clearly realize that we must not use the idea of “messiness” in any sketch. However, at the same time, we must not let it go, for it gives us a broader area to improve on creativity.