Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Channelling Frank Gehry

A couple of weeks ago I showed a film on Frank Gehry in my Art & Design Since 1945 class, and then gave them this assignment:

Using Gehry's process, design and build a model of a building for a specific use. The model must be completed by the end of the class (3 hours from when the film ended), and must fit the footprint of a letter-sized manila folder. Include the names of the team members and design sketches in the folder.

They picked buildings out of a hat (more or less), and these are some of the results (I apologize for the meager information provided by the photos--I took them with my iPhone):

A performance space with indoor and outdoor venues.


A brewery, with a tasting room and a bistro.


A high-school science lab.


The science lab was the clear winner, but I really appreciated the ingenuity and spirit all of these guys put into the project. I'd mention their names, but I can't find the list. I'll edit this post to add them when I locate it.

The class is now busily working on group seminar projects like "The Artist's Book in the Twenty-first Century" and "Public Art and Architecture in the DFW Area." The results are almost always interesting, and this particular class shows more promise than usual. Can't wait to see what happens.