ARCHITECT FRANK GEHRY is known around the world for major, avant-garde public works such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, but he's never worked in China - where big projects demand big names.
In fact, Gehry's recent visit as the Hong Kong Business of Design Week's closing keynote speaker was his first time in Hong Kong, having taken part at the suggestion of Swire Properties, which hired him to design a museum complex for its West Kowloon cultural district project bid.
'I had been invited by a lot of people,' says Gehry. 'But [Chinese architecture] seems so skin deep. I remember a few years ago, we were invited to go to Nanjing to do a museum. And it was going to be a huge museum. And I got all excited about it. And we met with the guys a few times. And then, one day, they let me know that it had to be profitable.
'A museum had to be profitable, as a real estate venture.'
Gehry's trademark chuckle is heavily laced with irony and disappointment. 'Those guys were out to lunch. Of course, when we told them it couldn't be, they abandoned the project. So, it was that kind of stuff that came at me. That was one example. There were others like that. So, I just never bothered.'
The problem is the 'Bilbao effect'. When the Guggenheim Museum opened in the Spanish city in 1997, it pumped 600 million euros into the local economy within its first three years of operation, according to Financial Times estimates. The free-form sheets of titanium sparked a media frenzy. It was given credit for revitalising a dilapidated industrial town into one of Spain's leading tourist attractions. In a 2001 visitor survey, 82 per cent of tourists said they went to Bilbao specifically to see the museum. It has been the catalyst for the current notion that the more outrageous the architecture, the more money the city would make.
