Q2e Listening & Speaking 5: Unit 5 Video Transcript
Frank Gehry Transcript
Reporter: Along the Nervion River, Gehry’s greatest achievements so far flows into
the skyline of Bilbao, Spain. The Guggenheim Museum is so innovative,
no art inside will ever be as important as the building. It's been called a
miracle. When he finished it, Gehry stood there with his clients and was
struck by a powerful thought. Why?
Gehry: Because you get self-conscious about these things. You know, you push
out like I did and then you look at it. You say, “What have I done to these
people?” No, it's true. This is how I felt. They knew it, too. They were very
disturbed because I wasn't able to talk in positive terms about it.
Reporter: What did you say?
Gehry: Well, no, I just said, you know, “I wished I'd changed this, I wanted, you
know …“ I was a basket case.1 But I do this on every project.
Reporter: If Gehry is self-doubting, rumpled,2 even shy, his projects are his
alter ego.3 There's attitude in the angles, conviction in the curves. His
work is, well, out of line.
Gehry: It takes time to see the evolution and then you realize, “Oh, that's what
he was getting at.”
Reporter: Getting to Bilbao was an evolution of many years. You see the beginnings
of it in the American Center in Paris, the Toledo Visual Arts Center in
Ohio, and the Weismann Museum in Minnesota. Architecture critics rave,
but forget about the experts. Stand outside any Gehry building and look
at the faces. The cameras come out on Venice Beach in California, Prague
in the Czech Republic, and in Bilbao.
Goldburger: The Bilbao Museum in Spain really changed the world.
Reporter: Paul Goldburger, architecture critic for the New Yorker magazine, says
Gehry's Bilbao masterpiece is making architecture a spectator sport.
1
basket case: a person who is slightly crazy and who has trouble dealing with problems
2
rumpled: messy or not smooth and neat
3
alter ego: a person whose personality is different from your own but who shows or acts as another side of your
personality
©Oxford University Press. Permission granted to reproduce for classroom use.
Q2e Listening & Speaking 5: Unit 5 Video Transcript
Goldburger: That building has been attracting all kinds of people who aren't
necessarily great architecture buffs, all kinds of people who haven't gone
to Europe to see a building any newer than 500 years old in their lives,
and yet they're all flocking to see this one, which really is a kind of
cathedral of our age.
Reporter: If this is a cathedral, Gehry's professional pilgrimage4 began with a
mortal building, a little house in Santa Monica, the house he still lives in.
Gehry: The guy from over there came over one day when he saw it finished, and
he said he didn't like it. And I said, “Why don't you like it?” And he said,
“Well, it's just strange.”
Reporter: Well, imagine if it was next door to you. Gehry wrapped an existing
middle-class home in a shell of corrugated steel, glass, and a chain-link
fence up on the roof. The kind of stuff that Gehry saw in his neighbors’
yards, but they all chose to ignore.
Gehry: This house had two big campers. There was chain-link fences, so I was
just trying to become part of my middle-class neighborhood. I was trying
to figure out how to fit in.
Reporter: But geniuses rarely do. What Gehry had created right there on Main
Street was a piece of modern art. He argues that his house isn’t the only
thing that sticks out in the neighborhood when you see the world the
way he does.
Gehry: I'm saying, “See that black roof and that tile roof? “
Reporter: Yeah.
Gehry: They're in collision; they don't fit together. If you look at that
composition of that house and that house, there's a collision of ideas
even though they are very conventional houses. They have not respected
each other in any way. So, that's the language of the city, and it's all over
the place.
Reporter: Many voices talking at once.
Gehry: Yes, so I took that language and made a house with it.
4
pilgrimage: a journey to a place that is connected with someone or something that you admire or
respect
©Oxford University Press. Permission granted to reproduce for classroom use.
