MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE
After a lifelong career creating some of the world’s most famous buildings , Frank Gehry has teamed up with a luxury brand to put his manifesto to the test, writes
At 91 years old, world-famous architect Frank Gehry has gone gangsta, as design journalist Frankie Entwistle comments in architecture, interiors and design magazine Dezeen. Entwistle is referencing Gehry’s collaboration with Hennessy XO cognac to mark the luxury brand’s 150th anniversary. The architect has designed a limited edition of crinkly bottles following the iconic Hennessy shape made out of 24-carat gold-dipped bronze in a flashy silver foil-like crystal glorifier to display it, and a fusil, which is used to taste a small quantity of the drink to test its quality, from brass and gold.
The items come packaged in a protective cardboard case that was created in homage to the corrugated-cardboard furniture that the architect designed in the 1970s.
No-one’s denying that it’s very bling. In fact, one commenter said of the flashy design: “This bottle of ‘Henny’ will surely appear in every rap music video — it’s tack-o-licious.”
But Gehry has never been a designer to embrace subtlety and refinement — which is not to say that he isn’t sensitive to his buildings’ surroundings.
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, which opened in 1997, is a good example of Gehry’s design exhibitionism. The building is audacious in its demand for attention. The glittering curvilinear facade reflects not only the sky and the water — it’s built on the banks of the Ría del Nervión — but also Gehry’s childhood fascination with fish. The titanium tiles that sheathe its ocean liner-like shape resemble scales and reference the city of Bilboa’s historical industries of fishing and shipbuilding. It all makes sense.
The Bilbao Guggenheim made both Gehry and the Basque city world famous.
Though Gehry’s style has been called deconstructivist — a movement in postmodern architecture where elements of the design appear to be fragmented — for me it is the undulating movement that best describes his aesthetic. Ribbons blowing in the wind suspended in a moment, swimming silver fish caught in a shaft of light, ripples in water — Gehry’s superpower is making the ephemeral permanent without losing its intriguing sense of precariousness.
One of his later projects, the Beekman Tower — dubbed 8 Spruce Street — in New York has a ripple running across its exterior as if the facade was malleable and was being blown by a powerful wind.
His Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles is home to the city’s Philharmonic orchestra and, like the museum in Bilboa, has become a tourist attraction. Inspired by Gehry’s passion for sailing, the steel panels appear to be sails billowing in the wind.
The fantastical Weisman Art Museum on the University of Minnesota campus also resembles a ship sailing through a dream. Its fractured facade catches the light as if one of Georges Braque’s cubist masterpieces had been turned into a building.
On a smaller scale, Gehry’s Dancing House in Prague seems straight out of the Gothic imagination of filmmaker Tim Burton, and his Gehry House in Santa Monica, built in 1978, earned both cheers and jeers for its use of jagged, jarring sculptural lines and everyday materials like corrugated iron, plywood and chain link. His design for the Stata Centre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, resembles a giant stove-top coffee percolator.
Whatever the style, though, if Gehry’s buildings were people, most of them would be narcissists.
When I spoke to Gehry over Zoom from his home in Los Angeles recently, I asked him what role technology has played in enabling him to create buildings that have, in many ways, revolutionised modern architecture.
“Many years ago I became curious about how airplanes were made and I started to research the technology that was used for their manufacture,” he said. “I realised that there was a possible connection between how planes are made and how architecture could be designed and so I acquired [the CATIA] software from Boeing and made some buildings with it — like the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Bilboa building.”
The aircraft design software allowed elaborate shapes to be made without prohibitive cost. It enabled him to realise the Bilbao Guggenheim, as he’s keen to point out, within its $100m budget.
“We were also able to build the tower in New York. It’s 76 storeys and has a skin that
Gehry’s superpower is making the ephemeral permanent without losing its intriguing sense of precariousness
has movement, maybe a sister to the new cognac bottle in a way (though not as active as the bottle) — but it has folded metal which become bay windows in the tower.”
Gehry said his building would not have been possible without the software.
“We invited other architects, like Zaha Hadid, to train on that software and she took it to the moon. The software is everything — you can make multiple curves, you can make space, you can do things you could never do before. It’s given me a lot more flexibility in allowing the buildings to have human expression. So they become accessible. They’re not just blank towers or spaces with an industrial facade. They move people. I wanted the same effect from the cognac bottle.”
What was it about the collaboration with Hennessy that drew him to the project?
“The first thing is there’s something magical about the location of the distillery on the Charente River in Cognac, France. The shimmer on the water inspired the crinkled surface of the bottle,” he said.
“I also wanted to challenge myself to personify the handmade quality of Hennessy XO with a handmade bottle that feels good to hold, catches the light beautifully and expresses the hand of the artisans who helped make the cognac.
“Years ago when I visited Delphi and stood in front of the Charioteer statue, I was moved to the point of tears. I was amazed that artists could transmit feelings over thousands of years with inert materials. I saw this as an opportunity to do the same, to represent the enormous amount of feeling that goes into making this cognac; all the people and the history involved. I asked myself, how do you transmit that gravitas to someone who picks up this bottle?”
Gehry is clearly passionate about everything he designs, from a building that can transform a city, to a bottle that holds a special liquid. “I can’t understand people who don’t put their heart and soul into their work … that just want to get it over with,” he said. “Most of our cities are designed by people like that. And that isn’t necessary. For the same amount of money, effort and time, you can express a sense of humanity and upliftment. I always try and give something. I try to be as generous as possible with ideas.”
Make your world go round with MICHELIN Star food
We all know that at some point, being stuck at home during the lockdown made us grow weary of the same old food. We are only human after all and we crave food that’s out of the ordinary – food that makes our taste buds come alive.
That’s probably why so many people across the globe had a desire for culinary innovation in their own kitchens. It seemed like a secret Masterchef competition was going on pretty much everywhere you looked on social media. Hashtags such as #StressBaking and #QuarantineBaking are still being used to show off works of food art.
Psychology can explain this behaviour – it’s comfort food. When you bake bread or craft a sugary treat, it’s your way of generating a warm hug – and we all know we needed a ton of those during our harsher lockdown measures. Spending time in the kitchen soothed our nerves. It just so happened that we were all doing it at the same time, which led to a yeast shortage in April.
A quick trip down memory lane
Now you might wonder what MICHELIN has to do with food. Well, as it turns out, a great deal – and it has for some time now. It started with the MICHELIN guide, and its origins go way back to the turn of the century.
In 1889, brothers Andre and Edouard MICHELIN founded the iconic tyre company in the quaint French town of Clermont-Ferrand. At the time, there were only about 3 000 cars on the road. As you can imagine, this didn’t make good economic sense for a tyre company. So the brothers came up with an ingenious idea.
They compiled a small red guide filled with information for travellers with the intention of encouraging motorists to drive out more. The guide was filled with details on the best places to visit, where to fill up with fuel and how to change a tyre – which sounds like content marketing in its infancy.
For two decades, the guide came at no costs to motorists, but one day Andre MICHELIN saw his guides being used to prop up a workbench at a tyre shop. Since people only value what they pay for, a new MICHELIN guide was produced in 1920 with a price tag of seven francs. The new guide showcased a list of restaurants to visit, based on strict criteria.
As the guide grew in strength and influence, the brothers recruited a team of mystery diners (or inspectors) to visit restaurants to decide if they deserved a mention in the guide. In 1926, the guide began to award MICHELIN Stars to restaurants with a single star. Five years later, more stars were awarded based on a hierarchy system of zero to three. Zero being very good and worth a visit and three quite elite and offering exceptional cuisine.
Shooting for the stars
There is no restaurant in South Africa that has been awarded a MICHELIN Star yet, but not because there’s a lack of quality food. It’s simply because the MICHELIN inspectors do not operate here. We really wish they would because our restaurants will surely make the cut. A case in point is La Colombe, a restaurant in Franschhoek, which is rated as among the top restaurants in the world. It’s ranked 13th on Trip Advisor’s Top Fine Dining Restaurants in the World for 2020.
What we can celebrate is that we technically do have MICHELIN Star chefs. Chef Jan Hendrik was the first South African to receive a MICHELIN Star for his restaurant in Nice, France.
Chef Jean Delport was also awarded a MICHELIN Star for his restaurant in England. The MICHELIN guide has praised the restaurant for its skilfully crafted dishes that are creative and have an original style. When inventing new dishes, Delport stays true to the South African notion of “local is lekker”, which makes us very proud. This shows the world that our culinary expertise can compete with the best in the world.