In late June, we sat down with Canadian-born, L.A.-based architect Frank Gehry. Gehry was back in his hometown, Toronto, for the launch of Forma, a pair of 73- and 84-storey towers in the downtown Entertainment District, clad with stainless steel panels.
Despite the fanfare surrounding the launch, Gehry was ambiguous about the idea of super-tall buildings downtown. He’d prefer to see downtown Toronto developed less intensively?but since the floodgates have been opened, he offers Forma as a high-quality, artistically conceived alternative to the norm.
Here’s Canadian Architect editor Elsa Lam’s interview with Frank Gehry.
Canadian Architect: I was hoping to talk a little bit about architecture in general, to give context to this project?. Frank Gehry: When we?re doing it, and when we?re in the soup, you don?t realize how good or bad it is. You?re too focused on temporal issues that are right there, without thinking a lot about what you?re leaving. It?s different.
[The Forma towers are] only one piece, it?s not the whole city. The city has gone ahead and done a bunch of stuff that most of us never expected. Some of it?s not good.
CA: When the renderings first came out for this, nine years ago, the big talk was about how this was extremely tall for Toronto. Now, there?s several towers that are similar in height, and lots more on the boards.
FG: And so, if we could have gotten together and talked about it, we could have done a better job. Instead of everybod...