GDC 2001: Current Architecture and Potential Approaches to Level Design


Experience Music Project, Seattle - Frank Gehry

Description
The first of the buildings, I wanted to look at is the Experience Music Project located in Seattle, right next to the Skydome. This building was commissioned by Paul Allen, the Microsoft cofounder, in celebration of Jimi Hendrix and his guitars. The building houses performance halls, exhibits and studio spaces related to recent music history. The building exterior is comprised of billowing brightly colored metallic volumes. The monorail stop for the Seattle Skydome actually passes through a section of the building. Apart from the exhibit installation, the interior is fairly unfinished, and has exposed structure and mechanical systems.

 

The building exterior is comprised of billowing brightly colored metallic volumes.

 

Background
Gehry is a Canadian-born architect working out of Los Angeles. He has built a long career on creating buildings with dynamic and exuberant forms, coupled with a radical use of materials.
One of the earliest projects Gehry became known for was his own home in Los Angeles. Over a period of years, he created a series of additions to a relatively small house. The additions were inventive in their use of 'found' materials like chain-link fence and corrugated sheet metal. They were also imaginative in the way they intensified and elaborated the simple spaces of the house. Unfortunately, his neighbors were not so happy with the design results.

More recently, Gehry has received international acclaim for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. The Guggenheim, clad in a titanium skin, is definitely an elder relative of the Seattle project. This exuberant riverside museum has become a major tourist attraction and has aided in developing a local economy.

Process
Where is the computer in all of this? Gehry's experimentation with materials extends to process too. He works from a series of loose sketches and rough models that are scanned in 3-d and then developed as working drawings. The sketches and models are overlaid on the basic program requirements and Gehry sculpts the forms from there. The building is literally designed through the working models.

Gehry uses the aircraft manufacturing software, CATIA, to optimize the design details and expedite communication with contractors. CATIA was originally invented for the design of Mirage jets and is now used by Boeing and Chrysler for their projects.

 

The interior is fairly unfinished, and has exposed structure and mechanical systems.

 

Potential Application
We are not at the point where we are prepared to scan physical models, but if you are working with a license or tying into a movie production, the sets may already have been digitized or virtual buildings created for matte paintings that could be used to develop a level.

Gehry's approach has potential application where a level requires a non-traditional atmosphere. How can these dynamic forms help gameplay? Gehry takes a relatively simple functional layout, and develops a dynamic design around it. In a multiplayer arena, where the focus is on maintaining constant player movement, and the architecture takes more of a background role, forms could be developed that reflected this frenetic activity.

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Aronoff Center for Design and Art, Cincinnati - Peter Eisenman