Anybody I talk to agrees that maybe 2 percent of the building environment since the war, we could call architecture.
Frank GehryWe don't see the banality, but we accept banality. We accept it as inevitable, and it's not.
Frank GehryErich Mendelsohn's drawings are expressive and beautiful. If he'd had the computers we have now, everything I've done he would have done before me. I would have had to figure out something else.
Frank GehryThe game is if the orchestra can hear each other, they play better. If they play better and there's a tangible feeling between the orchestra and the audience, if they feel each other, the audience responds and the orchestra feels it.
Frank GehryWhen I was a kid, my father didn't really have much hope for me. He thought I was a dreamer; he didn't think I would amount to anything. My mother also.
Frank GehryIf the room is friendly to a relationship between lecturer and audience, you feel everything - the tension, the appreciation. I think the audience feels it too.
Frank GehryI think people care. If not, why do so many people spend money going on vacations to see architecture? They go to the Parthenon, to Chartres, to the Sydney Opera House. They go to Bilbao... Something compels them, and yet we live surrounded by everything but great architecture.
Frank GehryI make a model of the site. There are some obvious things: where the entrance should be, where the cars have to go in. You start to get the scale of it. You understand the client's needs, and what the client is hoping for and yearning for.
Frank GehryIf the general public demanded better, they'd get better, because the marketplace responds to the public's needs and desires.
Frank GehryThe whole can be greater than the sum of it's parts, that we all have something to put in the pie to make it better, and that the collaborative interaction works.
Frank GehryGenerally in our world, whether in architecture or almost anywhere else, we devalue the artist, and schools at whatever level shut people down.
Frank GehryJust because you are an architect and make decent buildings does not mean that you can suddenly become a set designer for one of the best avant-garde dancers in the world.
Frank GehryEverything - design and technology and materials - has changed since the World Trade Center was built. A lot of it has to do with computers, which allow us to be far more efficient as well as structurally sound.
Frank GehryYou never build the perfect building. Only Allah is perfect. Life is such. You make decisions on conclusions, then some guy invents something else and the world changes. That's comforting. There's no one way to use museums, no one way to do art. That also means there is no one way to build museums.
Frank GehryThe safety requirements, which are necessary, spread everything out and push people farther and farther away from the stage and from each other.
Frank GehryI found the material that people hated the most and used the most. So, I was going and try and see if I could play with it sculpturally.
Frank GehryArchitecture and any art can transform a person, even save someone. It can for children - for anyone. It still does for me.
Frank GehryYour best work is your expression of yourself. Now, you may not be the greatest at it, but when you do it, you're the only expert.
Frank GehryWhen you agree to collaborate, you agree to jump off a cliff holding hands with everyone, hoping the resourcefulness of each will insure that you all land on your feet.
Frank GehryI attended a lecture by a gray-haired old man from Finland, who later I discovered was the architect Alvar Aalto. I was very moved. I wasn't interested in architecture, but it was a moving thing I've never forgotten.
Frank GehryA well-designed home has to be very comfortable. I can't stand the aesthetes, the minimal thing. I can't live that way. My home has to be filled with stuff - mostly paintings, sculpture, my fish lamps, cardboard furniture, lots of books.
Frank GehryThere are people who design buildings that are not technically and financially good, and there are those who do. Two categories - simple.
Frank GehryI'm preprogrammed emotionally and intellectually not to go down blind alleys. I don't waste the time. I automatically edit out whatever's impractical.
Frank GehryFor me, every day is a new thing. I approach each project with a new insecurity, almost like the first project I ever did. And I get the sweats. I go in and start working, I'm not sure where I'm going. If I knew where I was going I wouldn't do it.
Frank GehryIf I knew where I was going, I wouldn't do it. When I can predict or plan it, I don't do it.
Frank GehryGreen issues have been used as a marketing tool. Sometimes these green claims are completely meaningless.
Frank GehryMany people put a green button on their collar and feel good, just like a lot of people put an American flag on their lapels and feel patriotic. It's not enough.I'm not dismissing it.
Frank GehryI don't think all buildings have to be iconic, but the history of the world has shown us that cultures build iconic buildings for their major public buildings.
Frank Gehry