Reflections on S. F. G.

The film "Sketches of Frank Gehry" provided an interesting introduction to the life and design process of the iconic Frank Gehry. The film proved to be quite insightful, while not becoming boring. In particular, the film covered the progression of Gehry's work, from the early years when he was still designing buildings which fit the norm and trying to make money, through today and his starchitect status. It seems that everyone needs to visit a psychiatrist in order to open themselves and free up their creativity. Obviously, as Gehry's doctor pointed out, you cannot free someone's creativity if there is nothing there in the first place. But, this part of his story made an good point, that it is important as a designer to create things that you want to create, and help your clients to understand the work, rather that create strictly for the client and have to justify it to yourself.

The most compelling aspect of the film was the opportunity to see Gehry and his design process at work. His focus is primarily on using fluid and rough sketches to create process models. He and his associates then focus on cutting, gluing, adding and subracting to push the design in model form. The process was very inspirational, in fact, particularly the idea of seeing the work in 3-d throughout design and only computerizing the model data at the end of the process of modeling. Thus, the computer, on which it is difficult to feel the actual space, does not become a hinderance. It is quite clear that the process has worked well for Gehry, and the freedom of said process is visible in his work.