of that. i stood back when it might have been easier to remain. you ow i think that when we move forward and, hopefully move little more hand in hand and to be able to have productive conversations, we've righted our wrongs and we've looked towards our better angels, as we have in past cassidy hutchinson for your courage, for your willingness to share and speak out, and to to be one of those pillars that stands up for our democracy in those brutal, hant you for sharing with us. thank you vergood morning. thank you all for coming. thank you for coming. did i. 'm on my way there, but i. there the united states has dinary influential major frank.

this is wright. this is the other one i didn't wright. i wanted to, but i in i'm sure you all know that frank won the pritzker prize for architecture which is the the award of of the design. in 1989 before you were born. there'evelyn de broand just to just to seto you the citation that it's very short. so only seven sentences. stage a little bit before i read it. in 1989, and i should also preface this by saying i'm not an architecture critic nor an historian, so i may get some. oh, well, i'm going to leave.

before the pritzker prize was announced re profession, i think you could say, was in some the there was an exhibition that had been mounted at the museum of modern art in 1979 by drexler, calledformation gardens in modern architecture. it was controversial, partly because drexler, who'd been at moma v serving curator in the history of the of the muhe basically did an exhibition which said modernism in architecture is dead. it is over. some agreed. some people didn't agree. there was fistfights and things like that. and the profession changed and a number of architects began develop what came to be calledpostmodernism kind of trying to adapt neoclassical style or neo-gothic styles or whatever. and meanwhile, in santa monica,

this guy had built a of of structure as little 1920s bungalow and on a and in santa monica that was unlike anything that was being done. so let me read these seven sentences to you from the citation in an artistically it that too often looks backward rather than toward the future where retrospectives are more prevalent than risk taking. it is important to honor the architecture of gary refreshingly original american proceeding as it does from his populist southern perspective. gary's work is a highly refined and sophisticated and adventurous esthetic that emphasizes the art of that in a way an art critic is here. hi contrary virtual

but always variously described as impermanent. but theking this award, commends this restless spirit that has made his buildings a unique expression of and its ambivalent valal open to experimentation. he has as well, a sureness and maturity that resists in the same way that picasso did, being bound either by critical acceptance or success. his buildings are juxtaposed collage edges of smaterial aisles that make users appr theater and reveal. althoughhe tlifetime of achievement. the jury hopes mr. gehry will view it as encouragement for continuing an extraordinary work in progress, as well as for his

significant contributions thus far to the 20th century. so slow, i never read that luxury. that's why i read it, because i have two questions. one. did you believe it? then, and do you believe it now? no, no. you didn't believe. it's not about the. it wasit wasn't. wa in what was going on in architecture. i was very interested in what drexler was talking about because we were coming out of we're of wars and modernism and building is by breyer and except for frank wright and everything was kind of cold and and. you know, these are all very precise and the culture wasn't

that it was. it was heading for all kinds of chaos. so. i looked at it. i remember theem moma, the drexler show, it was very powerful. if anybody had seen it it was it was really seductive. it was you could just go there and slap it up and just do that for the rest of your life. and some of the architects started going down that rabbit hole. conference with a so michael graves and more than two were in philip and. it was at that group that time that philip put the little twirly sitting top of the at&t. it was as a result of that show

and some the other architects were doing what we ended up calling postmodernism, because the show drexlerpostmodernism was very seductive. like you just you could just go in those buildings and love it. what was seductive about it? you just getm and friendly and you embrace saying and you know, it didn't. but it had nothing do time. we were living in it. anddetails of details. so it worked for some people. but, you know, it generally couldn't go there because it was expensive to do it. i was at a conference with all of those guys and i remember i got, i had my 15 minutes of i said, why do we have to go like, why can't we? why can't world is moving. there's airplanes and all kinds

of movement cars, boats rockets, whatever. can't we find a way to express our time. there must be something that's that that we can deal with. and i ended it. i remember ending it by saying, well, if you can't, maybe go back 300 million years before maúr fish because i had been studying japanese woodcuts by hiroshie when you started in architecture? when i did in the, it was right after the war. so the the g.i. came back from japan with a pile of information on how to build a small house of beautiful houses with the tommy

mats and a little wooden my teachers at usc were we're doing pretty seductive. so and so i hiroshi guess would cut fish were particularly interesting to me for some reason and i said very architecturally they express movement 300 billion years before man why don't you look at that for inspiration. didn't, but i did. 's how i got fish. and i apologize for getting fishy,s a law you probably have seen pic frank's in santa monica, which is a sort of circa 20, i think it's dutpink stucco house. ocean avenue, and they moved it in 1900 to that. so and it was a duplex in and

there was land beside it. so i just built kitchen and dining room to it. and so when you sat at the dining room tab the kitchen, you were looking at the house when you were in the living room, you were looking out and it was you know, it was discussion between the past, how the neighbors hated me. ey get they went to the city, tried to get it knocked down. neighbor from across the road was standing there with me one and he said, how could you do this to this neighborhood? and i said, where do you live? and they pointed across i said you have a chain link fce around your garden, don't you? he said, yes. i said, you have an old trailer in the backyard, don' you? i said yes, but i said, you have a car jacked up on blocks

in your front yard. don't you? i said, what's the matter with that. give me a break. i anyway, it kind of worked and i said, i keep it, i keep that house for some reason, forhen that you were mentioning, asphalt, asphalt floor, like the driveway to the garage. and i remember the first time i went there, this must have been in the eighties sometime when we met. and kitchen table there's a big skylight up above and a glass wall and. it dawned on meu just said. i was looking at the picture window on the pink stucco looking into the living room of the house. and i great, the great modernof architecture is indoor outdoor living. and there i was outdoors,

indoors, looking at the indoors while i was outdoors at the same time. so i didn't look, knew nothing like nothing like richard or albert i wasn't trying, actually. i didn't just happen know my life with that in mind my personality wasn't trying to do that. i was just making a house for the family. i can't i can't help. is there anything japanese about that esthetic. i don't i don't kprobably. the warmth. maybe. maybe, yeah, i don'td a few japanese. i my very first house of a was looks like it was design a japanese architect. uh huh. it was for julius shs in law. they never built it, it.

it's veryese. and then the. well, i played in t gogo ku orchestra at ucla. they had a ethnomusicology department. and so i joined that that's the imperial court music. uh huh. there's this there's very few pieces and2 musicians only work in the imperial household and. and so when disney hall was finished i, the go-go crew came to disney hall. uh, they'd never come. but i have pictures of them sitting on stage at disney and you could see the japanese influence in the walt concert hall. uh okay. you can see it. it's pretty clear. okay, let's just see it. something comes

everything. i mean, speaking of disney hall let's. disney hall, the guggenheim, bilbao the louis vuitton foundation in paris. ah, ree etty well known buildings these days. they all, in way riff on boats and sailing. and the disney hall is like this g three masted schooner with giant sails and and bilbao is a you know, because it's it's up against the d the louis vuitton sails are like a like a sailboat or an impressionist painting. what is this with boats? i know you you were a sailor and you built own boat. and i were a sailor. i am a sailor. you are a sailor. what kind a i have a boat and i designed a boat first. yeah. yeah.

the foggy, right? yeah. yeah. so what's the, what's the of esthetic motif in designing. i don't know. there'sre's clarity of kind. i don't i don't know. i just love it. i love the feeling of nature i get it. i can get romantic about it. well, they they have they do have a sense of graceful movement to them. and yeah, i mean, one of the interesting things to me. well it's again the fish. yeah. and the fish. so you fish from the boat. no, i don't. okay. but there's the expressly that's kind of interesting because when, when typically thinks of architecture as, as a solid and immovable static. yeah but you're buildings are engaging movement. i in bilbao it was really enge the the city the river

the bridge the all the things that were there. and so became a partner a visual partner on this on the river front. uh it alsogalleries and. i work hard at that because that's a big deal me. d out. disney hall i work with. the l.a. philharmonic for years. from my first meetings with her in this, when he came to l.a. he asked me to work on the hollywood bowlme my music teacher and spenttime with him. and with the music world. and so and when the competition

for disney hall came up, it was logical that i would enter. we never thought i would win but i did. it took a while. i the not a musician, i i'm not a scholar or music. in fact, i just did wrangle with d not bognerit. but i just did it as ad. but i like to meddle with music projects. you've done a lot of set designs for for physical productions. do you approach the design kind of of an opera set the same way you bui everything same way. got to whatever the the issue is you to deliver. feel very compelled

to deliver on time, on budget. i'll let -- and i do. yeah i've got a record but like where do you start? the you know what you were doing. that's right. but what do you this is that all. i met with the ernest. i met with the the community people the program was pretty clear. we were already a were built that weren'tsuccessful, like new york, like wherever, san francisco or they were lacking. so this is around the country. and and we really got into it

with the musicians and with. i about with the composers, with the conductors, with the. so it's a central thing. yeah, but you get into it, i mean you got, it's not peripheral. i gotyeah. we're okay with. something like disney ha obilbao which are both, you peak of architecture of our time. is there anything about either of those buildings that you would change? you'd like a do over on? i, i think disney could be simplified a little bit bit not as complicated as it looks. it'stairwell and so i just made them curved. it's a box and the and it's lower part, orchestra part and, an audience

part. and the balconies. so it's all pretty much proscribed. it how you put it together andt connects with the musicians do they feel it the biggest problem a concert hall isship between audience and, the performer, and that's the same in the if a theater person you walk into a stage and you see the audience, you know pretty quickly for the year they're same in music so we constantly look for for ways to improve that for instance disney ther up we we got vito t for an opera pit orchestra pit which was too bad so this last rheingold i had to sort fabricated an orchestra pit

which compromised compromised of the sound and so it's it's not easy to do opera in disney hall because it's not house. but we di little concert hall and, berlin for daniel barenboim for divine orchestra stian leisraeli-palestinian. i got involved with it that it as a gift to them because it was i was upset about what israel was doing and that i wante's my politics. forget get me. but until it's an existing warehouse in berlin so i could couldn't hang seats or balcony on the on the building because that was i couldn't do it. so i floating balcony. we had nobody done that and it's

bonkers. fantastic. we want to do one in disney hall in hall. we want to float a balcony and have an upper level. the other thing we discovered by cident is that when the orchestra's playing members are on the sameaudience. it's but worso the colburn school that we're doing across the road from disney right has that will have a thousand seats but first rose feet are on the floor with the orchestra and itfloating balcony flying so you it. but the main thing is the connectivity and and i in all the years since disney hall has beenpen. people come up to me, i go to at

concerts and tell me how that works. and the orchestra tells me how that works so that it. so that's it. that's the payoff. so that kind of a social connection. yeah. and it works and theater too you know, when disney hall was pk ws ateled