A Gehry Jell-O in Manhattan

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A Gehry Jell-O in Manhattan

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Opinion

Dawn. Gallery. August 09, 2008. Text and photos: Rumana Husain

I recently saw the IAC building in Chelsea, New York, which is architect Frank Gehry’s debut in the Big Apple. My first look at the building reminded me of a favourite childhood dessert — jelly — albeit grey in colour instead of the brightly coloured ones my mother used to make in a big mould, quite like the IAC building. I waited for it to jiggle and wiggle, shake and bounce a bit to show off that Jell-O quality the American dessert is so famous for. However, with a glass curtain wall all around, of enormous 35 ft by 22 ft panels, going from floor to ceiling, the hideous thing did not budge.

Sorry, Gehry fans, don’t take me wrong, I have admired a few of his works too, but this building — a piece of imposing yet bawdy architecture by the Hudson River — just does not work for me.

The building, located at 19th Street and 11th Avenue, serves as the world headquarters for a media and internet conglomerate, InterActiveCorp (IAC).

In an article in praise of Gehry’s design that appeared in The Guardian last year when the building was completed, Ed Pilkington wrote, “The IAC rises up from the old brick and rusting iron that is the meat-packing district of Chelsea like a shimmering white yacht, its sails puffed out in a gentle breeze. Viewed from the north, it really does appear to move, sailing southwards alongside the Hudson.” Nevertheless, as I have mentioned earlier, to my untrained eyes the building, on a 3,265 square-yard site — a former truck garage — appeared puffy, yes, but lifeless.

Apparently Gehry himself has this to say of the building: “Its façade is very sensuous, almost feminine,” and “I’m a very pragmatic architect, but people think I’m not because of the shapes.”

The one sign on this monolithic structure is the IAC name-plate, and it looks rather tacky. Accompanied by my daughter, a graduate student of architecture whose ‘under-training’ eyes were more familiar with the building than mine, I ventured inside the uninviting monster after sizing it from the outside. On seeing that I was equipped with a camera, the gentleman at the reception was quick to point out that photography of the building from the inside was strictly forbidden. I immediately put on the lens cover to satisfy him (the image of the lobby is therefore borrowed from the Internet).

One wishes that Frank Gehry, instead of being so predictable and repetitious, would unleash his creativity to ‘sculpt’ something new and refreshing. The nine storey building has state-of-the-art technologies and facilities, including the world’s largest hi-resolution, edge-blended video wall, which is a floor-to-ceiling, interactive 118-foot-long screen running the length of the building, used for a variety of branding and entertainment activities. The acoustical environment consists of an absorbent material ceiling, concrete floor, curved glass exterior wall and the video wall itself. A brilliant single piece of furniture in the lobby is this long wooden seat, which looks more like it is made in wicker that we occupied eagerly, taking in the ambience of the otherwise stark lobby. The seat curves with the building and is probably made of Birchwood slats in an appealing design that does not encourage anyone to sit on it for too long. It does have a backrest in the middle though, where the curvature in the design is quite smooth and elegant. From here we view the video wall that only had different colours running through it at the time, lighting up the entire space in blues and oranges in the blink of an eye.

Admittedly, Gehry today is one of the world’s best known architects, who makes bold, albeit somewhat crazy statements such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Stata Centre at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Although he is now in his seventies, he and his team are working on a $4 billion development of the Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, one of New York’s five boroughs, and the Guggenheim Museum on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi, UAE, to be completed by 2012. The IAC building form notwithstanding, one wishes that the architect, instead of being so predictable and repetitious, would unleash his creativity to ‘sculpt’ something new and refreshing on the urban scene.

www.dawn.com