Hans Scharoun and Frank Gehry
1997 ACSA EUROPEAN CONFERENCE t BERLIN HANS SCHAROUN AND FRANK GEHRY TWO 61CONOCLASTS99SEEKING FORM FOR THE MODERN INSTITUTION GUNTER DITTMAR University of Minnesota Introduction support" he received "fromthe artists, which I was not Hans Scharoun and Frank Gehry, two architects gettingfrom the architects. The architects thought I was seemingly very distant in time, place and culture, weird."3 nevertheless, show striking parallels and similarities in The influence of art seems readily apparent in the their careers, their work, and their approach to dynamic, sculptural quality of their work. It is this very architecture. More than a generation apart and practicing quality, however, that is responsible for a great deal ofthe at radically different times and locations - Scharoun misunderstanding and misrepresentation by critics, before and after World War 11, mostly in Berlin, Gehry professional peers, theorists and historians. Using from the sixties to the present - the context and simplistic, descriptive labels,the work is characterized as circumstances withinwhich they developed their mature "expressionist"in Scharoun's case, or "neo-expressionist" architectural work, and the issues they confronted,were in Gehry's. Implicit is the notion that it is "irrational," remarkably similar. '(formalistic,"lacking any intellectual merit or rigor, the Scharoun, in his formative years during the two wars, result of self-indulgent,personal expression; that it is all played an active role in the avant-garde movement that, about style and not substance;
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