Detail View: Archivision Base to Module 9: American Center
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Preferred Title:
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American Center
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Alternate Title:
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Cinémathèque Française
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Image View:
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Temporary building, context view, from the northwest, depicting lateral tension cables
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Creator:
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Frank Owen Gehry (American architect, born 1929)
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Location:
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site: Paris, Île-de-France, France
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Location Note:
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51, rue de Bercy
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Date:
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1994 (creation)
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Cultural Context:
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American
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Style Period:
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Postmodern
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Work Type 1:
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mixed-use development
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Classification:
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architecture
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Material:
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limestone; steel; glass; zinc
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Technique:
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construction (assembling)
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Subjects:
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architectural exteriors; contemporary (1960 to present); Art museums
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Description:
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Now the home of the Cinémathèque Française, the largest archive of films, movie documents, and film-related objects in the world. The architecture of the building might be best understood against the backdrop of Gehry's struggles to build the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles (roughly concurrent with the timeline of this project) and his eventual triumph at Bilbao. If Bilbao's is definitively exuberant, the American Center's geometry seems almost indeterminate--sometimes masterful, other times awkward and circumstantial. Part of this encompasses a struggle to square irregular geometry with ordinary office space (which made up a substantial portion of the program). This illustrates the intermediate step that this building represents (somewhere between Disney and Bilbao) in the development of a workable process to translate irregular designs into material existence. (Source: Galinsky [website]; http://www.galinsky.com/)
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Collection:
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Archivision Base Collection
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Identifier:
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1A1-GF-AC-B1
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Rights:
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© Scott Gilchrist, Archivision, Inc.
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