Archaeology of the Digital: Greg Lynn and Frank Gehry on the Computer in Architecture
Digital design pioneer Greg Lynn examines together with internationally acclaimed Los Angeles-based
UCLA Architecture & Urban Design professor Greg Lynn and pioneering architect Frank Gehry have a conversation about the function of computer software as a tool to design buildings beyond our preexisting understanding of architecture's potential.
Frank Gehry in conversation with Greg Lynn, 2013. Photo: CCA "This interview with Frank Gehry was conducted as part of the exhibition Archaeology of the Digital, curated by Lynn at the Canadian Centre for Architecture.
GREG LYNN: When did you start using computers in the office?
FRANK GEHRY: It was right after we built the Vitra Design Museum. As you probably remember, there’s a stairway in the shape of a caracol (snail) that is expressed on the façade as it spirals up, and there is a zinc roof on it. Toward the top there’s a kink. The roof goes up, kinks, and then continues. At the time, to define it for the builder, we drew it using what I’d learned in school: descriptive geometry. The builder used those drawings, and he ended up with the kink! He started simultaneously at the bottom and at the top, and—kink—it didn’t work. I said to the people in the office then—Jim Glymph had just started working there—‘You know, I want to use shapes like that. How do I draw them so I don’t get a kink and so that it’s clear how to build it?’ Jim called IBM, who put him in touch with Dassault Systèmes. That’s when Rick Smith came into the picture. Once we started, there was no turning back.
The first thing we did was the Fish in Barcelona. We were working with Massimo Colomban, who was the head of Permasteelisa at the time. Massimo’s company was building the steel tower for Bruce Graham’s Hotel Arts in the Olympic Village, and they asked me to design a fish sculpture. My initial design was a wave, and then, pretty soon it became a fish. We were working with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) and they were using AutoCAD at the time, while we were already starting to use CATIA (software suite for computer-aided design). SOM insisted they could do it using CAD, but Colomban came in to the office to say, ‘Look, I can’t build from this.’ We showed him the CATIA files we had produced, and he went back to Italy. Two weeks later he called me up and said: ‘Perfetto!" - Lukas Feireiss, Feb. 13, 2021
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Frame website.
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