Frank Gehry gives journalist the finger
"98 per cent of what gets built and designed today is pure shit"
Frank Gehry gives journalist the finger was an incident that took place in Oviedo, Spain, in October 2014, where the architect was in attendance to receive a Prince of Asturias Award from King Felipe of Spain, for his notable achievements in the arts.
At a press conference held the day before he was presented with the award, the opening question to Gehry was “what his response was to people who accused him of creating architecture for show”, to which the architect simply replied by raising his middle finger.
After an uncomfortable silence, another journalist followed up on the impact of "emblematic" buildings in contemporary cities, to which the architect replied:
"Let me tell you one thing. In the world we live in, 98 per cent of what gets built and designed today is pure shit. There's no sense of design nor respect for humanity or anything. They're bad buildings and that's it. Every now and then, however, a small number of people do something special. They're very few. But - my God! - leave us in peace! We dedicate ourselves to our work. [...] At the very least, don't ask stupid questions like this."
As Peter Schjeldahl pointed out in The New Yorker, by expressing his 'digital defiance', Gehry "consciously mimed the shape of today’s predominant urban architectural style", the 'insolent shafts' of new developments like 432 Park Avenue or even the new One World Trade Center in New York, "today's proliferating, meaningless urban menhirs".
The incident came a week after Gehry had opened the new Foundation Louis Vuitton in Paris, which had met with fierce local opposition and was described by Guardian architecture critic Oliver Wainwright as " like a loud LV handbag a glitzy relative might bring you back from a duty-free splurge," and "a crazed indulgence of over-engineering [...] certainly a spectacle".
The 85 year old architect later apologised for his Oviedo indicretion, citing jetlag and explaining he had been caught in a "bad moment".