This week's LVW col: Frank Gehry

Here's this week's LVW column the Vegasy stuff that didn't fit in my forthcoming NYT piece on the Ruvo Center. You'll be able to hear Gehry for yourselves on the next episode of The Strip, a very rare opportunity as he does very few in-depth interviews at all, let alone ones used for radio or podcast. Join us 5-6 pm PT at LVRocks.Com for that. -sf

Frank Gehry likes Vegas...
...or maybe not

By STEVE FRIESS

"I’m fascinated with some of the architecture, fascinated with it,” the legend on the line insisted. “I mean, that little one with the castle that looks like a cartoon?”

“Yeah, the Excalibur,” I answered knowingly, expecting a punch line.

“That knocks my socks off,” the legend said in all seriousness. “You never see anything like that on that scale outside of Disneyland, you know? But Disneyland doesn’t ever build it that big. So it’s fascinating to see—it’s enlightening too. It’s interesting. That’s one of my favorite buildings there.”

In my head, I’m saying, Are you shitting me? But you don’t ask a man like Frank Gehry that question. At least not that way. Instead, I said it this way: “The Excalibur castle is your favorite building on the Strip?”

He laughed. “It’s one of my favorites.”

Shhh. Don’t tell Cesar Pelli, who gave us Aria, or Helmut Jahn, who designed the Veer. Or certainly not Lord Norman Foster, who has had the ignominy of envisioning a hotel-condo tower for CityCenter, only to have it shorn nearly in half because of construction defects, and then used as a billboard for an Elvis show. CityCenter’s fine, but $8.5 billion later, the man known—debatably, but still known—as the Greatest Living Architect has a soft spot for ... the Ex?

“One of the critiques of CityCenter is that the architecture is evocative of architecture of a lot of other cities,” Gehry said. “I know Vegas is trying to become a real city, so that’s the discussion and they kind of achieved it. But when you see it finished you say, ‘God, I wish it were more Vegas.’”

It’s such a strange remark, especially considering that the fact that we now have a Gehry building is also part of the discussion of Vegas becoming “a real city.” But that was the strange tension that ran throughout my half-hour interview with the 81-year-old visionary, a vacillation from what would seem like indictments to high praise for our city.

Read the rest at LasVegasWeekly.Com

Pictorial: Inside Vegas' Gehry

I took a tour of the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health the other day in advance of a feature about the project. The media has largely ignored the actual science and medicine that the project represents, obsessing instead over the seemingly blasphemous notion that Frank Gehry designed something for Vegas. My piece, I'm hoping, will put those parts into balance.

But, since this is a blog and so many of you are design-obsessed, I thought I'd share a little. Above is the not-yet-done events room under the swoopy Gehry dome that looks like this from the outside:


The project is just west of downtown, across from the World Market Center and up the street from the outlet mall. Even as we walked around it, there were people on traffic islands taking photos. Quite a draw.

The events center will be home to symposiums, meetings, concerts, fundraisers, that sort of thing. They'll rent it out -- it's got a full kitchen and, of course, the liquor support of founder Larry Ruvo's Southern Wine & Spirits -- to help fund the research and patient care operation.

Lest you're worried that addled brain-disease patients will be confused by such a busy design -- and I've had one editor so far who was convinced that was an issue -- here's what the place looks like from the parking lot.


See? It's just a four-story building. Patients come in, they're greeted by volunteers who take them to the second floor where they are taken directly into patient suites. They've cut out the waiting room because they don't want early-stage Alzheimer's patients to be freaked out and horrified by the often unruly behavior and physique of late-stage patients. Kinda brilliant, really.

Anyhow, the inside of the building is also Gehry's design. I thought these lamp fixtures, for instance, fit really well into the overall inside-the-head concept going on around here.


I'll be working on this one next week. Will post when it's published. I believe the events center will be opened in a month or two.