Who Needs an Architect!

NEW YORK —  ‘He doesn’t have a piling to stand on.” That’s the judgment of one historical expert on architect Frank O. Gehry’s tiff with arts patron Eli Broad and other project leaders over who should proceed with architectural and building plans for the Disney Concert Hall. Facing the possibility that a push to bring the hall’s construction in on time and on budget may give the job to a firm other than his own, Gehry foresees a threat to the integrity of the final result if he has no hands-on role.

“Take the Sistine Chapel,” says a professor of European haggling. “Michelangelo starts out like wildfire. But then he brings his pals to hang out up there on the scaffolding. Also his falcon, his dog, his rep. Demands they fire the pigment mixer and hire his deadbeat cousin. Meanwhile, cappuccino breaks get longer and longer. Behind schedule, way over budget. Finally, His Holiness had it up to here and it’s so long, Mr. Mike, bring in a new crew. And who notices the difference? Nobody!”

“Look at the Stonehenge astronomical observatory,” continues the prof, “That guy, Bogax the Chiseler, was the numero uno Druid architect, Mister Big Boulders. But so S-L-O-W. The committee gives him the completion contract. Upshot? The thing still isn’t finished!”

Other experts are similarly skeptical about Gehry’s claims that only he can see the hall’s construction through to a satisfactory end. One prominent Egyptologist is particularly dubious. “Thank your lucky deity that Hopstep, the original architect, lost out on the contract to finish the Great Pyramid of Cheops,” he fulminates. “His idea was to cover the thing with sequins, hand-fitted and glued. It would have busted the dynasty!”

In a similar vein, a noted scholar of ancient Greece sighs with relief that the controversial Myopis was fired off as chief architect of the Parthenon before construction. “Myopis was a trendy, always bad-mouthing marble as old hat and boring,” she explains. “If he’d had his way, the Parthenon would have been done in petrified goat cheese. It would have stunk forever and stood for a week!”

Nor can Gehry gain much succor from the example of America’s own Statue of Liberty. Listen to one landmarks expert: “Bartholdi, that Frenchie fruitcake who carved the original version, knew zip about the U.S. of A. He had Miss Liberty wearing a shortie negligee and a cowboy hat and holding a six-shooter in one hand and a bourbon bottle in the other. Thank God they reworked it on the boat coming over!”