Another Gehry Building

Frank Gehry's buildings can look unfinished or unruly, even a bit chaotic. But they often have surprisingly direct metaphorical stories to tell.Walt Disney Concert Hall is a joyously informal ship of state for a city keen to come together, if only for a few hours, in a collective experience. Gehry's own house in Santa Monica, a modest pink bungalow the architect wrapped in colliding layers of corrugated metal and chain link, is an unabashed affirmation of the workaday, un-pretty built landscape of Southern California.In the case of Gehry's newest project, the riotously sculptural $100-million Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas, the story is about the depths, and ultimately the limits of the human mind.

It's the poignancy of that architectural narrative that ultimately helps the building, which will open officially with a gala celebration Saturday night, overcome its reliance on some of Gehry's most recognizable architectural gestures. For me, and I suspect for other critics and architects, some of these strategies, intentionally crude detailing, exposed structure and the casual juxtaposition of dramatic and banal spaces, to name just three — have lost more than a little freshness over the years, particularly as the size and budgets of Gehry's projects have soared.At the Ruvo Center, which rises from a wide-open intersection about a mile north of the big casinos lining the Las Vegas Strip, the familiarity of those elements is balanced by a deep, affecting humanism at the building's core. This is surely in large part because the Ruvo Center's mission the complex is dedicated to research on and treatment of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's and other neurological diseases, is one Gehry has fully embraced.

Yet with his new addition to his portfolio, Gehry continues to push the limits of Architecture, however, is it a bit too far. Some might say his style is drastically progressing as he ages, and others beg to differ. As a young aspiring Architecture student, my peers and I continue to see Gehry in a different light, Yes he's an innovator, but sometimes his new designs just strike me as him losing his knack for functionality and practicality. Its almost as if Gehry is just being lazy with his designs and trying to produce some hocky building until someone says something to him. I hope for continued success for Gehry, but I am awaiting the story when he is smashed by the client for producing something they really don't like.