los angeles considers sandblasting gehry-designed concert hall

Once again, it is demonstrated that Frank Gehry cannot design a useful building. As an architect, his works are original compositions that show a rich blend of form and factor: steel and glass seem to bent like blades of grass in an perceptionless breeze. It's rather pretty.

But it's not useful. A building, above all else, must be utilitarian. It is a costly mistake to assume your new concert hall, classroom, et cetera should be 100 percent art and 0 percent viable space. Read this now: Frank Gehry is a dangerous architect more interested in forcing the world to work around his weird metal ribbons than he is in making a useful construct. I urge everyone to stop hiring this man until he can demonstrate he is capable of safer, more utilitarian designs.

As someone who has heard nothing but complaints about the Peter B. Lewis building on the CWRU campus, I can attest that most people detest Gehry's designs because they are so utterly impractical. The attached news story indicates that he has learned nothing from his experience of pissing off the Weatherhead school. The concert hall's exterior reflects sunlight into traffic and occupied houses, and even makes surrounding buildings inhospitably hot in the summer.

Congratulations, Frank. You made a giant magnifying lens. In Southern California.

I think this proves conclusively that Frank Gehry really has no compunction about designing for himself and not for anyone who will actually use or be affected by the building itself. Certainly Gehry isn't going to be driving by these monstrosities every day, or baking himself in an adjacent video store. He has no interest in assessing how his ugly-as-sin mirrored mounds are going to affect anyone. All he cares about it being able to say, "Look, I made a pretty building and it cost millions of dollars."

Your buildings suck Frank Gehry. You have no place being an architect Frank Gehry. You probably deserve to die Frank Gehry. Stop making these awful, impractical shit piles, Frank Gehry.