BEING FRANK ABOUT FRANK 09/17/08

Words  ::  Will Jones // Images  ::  Nick Rockowski, John Offenbach

Take a walk through the picturesque Royal Kensington Gardens in London and you’ll see ornate fountains, a boating lake, the golden gleaming Prince Albert memorial, acres of grass and an assortment of captivating sculptures and statues. Now add to that regal mix a giant unwieldy stack of wood, steel and glass courtesy of architect Frank Gehry. This ‘pavilion’, for that is its purpose, is the latest in a series of structures commissioned annually by the Serpentine Gallery, from architects who have never built in England before. And, on visiting Gehry’s pavilion, we don’t want him to build here again.
Past designers of the Serpentine Pavilion include Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind and Toyo Ito. Each produced a radical design, all had signature style but none has gone to such seeming lengths to rally against the serenity of the parkland site.
Hulking over-sized timber columns and beams stand lopsided and awkward, almost as high as the neighboring historic gallery. Glazed panels hang skewed at random angles above our heads, held up by some but not all of the forest of steel beams that jut into the sky like the mangled remnants of a train crash.
Gehry has a love hate relationship with the UK. He says that ‘we don’t get his work’. Now, that’s not true. He has built a cancer hospice in Scotland already and it is a beautifully and unique crafted piece of architecture that sits well within its surroundings. And, this journalist, along with many other people has traveled many miles to visit the fabulous Bilbao Guggenheim and Fred and Ginger, his dancing office building in Prague.

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