FRANK GEHRY AND …(IPHIGENIA): SET DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTIVE FORM

‘Music is mass and it builds things’, esperanza spalding said she dreamt one night as she struggled with the libretto for …(Iphigenia), the phrase forming the turning point for the work. The oneiric formulation extends the material nature of music, granting sonic vibrations architectural abilities. This paradox approaches a paradoxical aim at the heart of Frank Gehry's building practice: to imbue solid matter with motion. His free-form sculptural designs, instanced most famously in the spectacular designs for the Guggenheim Museum at Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, have granted him global auteur status. However, the set design for …(Iphigenia) offered and continues to offer him an attractive state of unknowing, one in which emerges the possibility of non-directed constructive form.