Is the fish an autobiographical symbol; a decomposition of meaning; or simply a dumb object threatening to read us?

 

As an architect who emerged from a period in which the discipline strongly emphasised communication and was primarily dominated by language, anyone looking at the current work of Frank Gehry would see an extreme departure from his origins.

 

His early years show projects aligning with the principles of the postmodernist movement of the Los Angeles art and architecture scene in the 60’s and 70’s. In contrast, his later work tells the story of an emerging architectural language more expressive in form, with a loosening of symbolic representation and an explicit rejection of the postmodern aesthetic.

 

Of the much speculation surrounding the work of Frank Gehry, some responses are useful to understanding the concept of legibility applied to architecture in a broader sense. Crucially there also remains a factor of his work that is severely overlooked and now superseded by the inescapable Bilbao Effect - that is, Gehry’s fish. Gehry’s work is fascinating in its refusal of any language other than its own, and famously defies categorisation. For me, an area of particular interest is how the fish is inherent in Gehry’s process – either as a notation, grammar or the building itself.

This paper attempts to explore and weave together these two strands. Drawing upon three readings of Gehry’s fish and addressing them as critical texts in a broader investigation of legibility in architecture. The three readings are as follows. [1] The work contains an enigmatic quality, used purposefully by the architect to encourage projected content and thus, meaning itself is derived from the ambition of the reader to understand the work (Charles Jencks). [2] Alternatively the work is to simply be enjoyed as a process of voiding itself from legibility under its own principles, thus maintaining the capacity to retain meaning (Peter Eisenman). [3] The character of the work is in fact the departure from meaning altogether, and is to be enjoyed in the process of pursuing a “sort of perfection” embedded within the architect’s psyche (Mark Linder).