E n D ®

Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen acted as client with deep
pockets for the EMP project. The private funding for this
publicly accessible project meant the citizens of Seattle had
no authority to be involved or influence on the design of the
EMP {unlike Springfielders). Gehry's freedom is evident when
looking at the plan of the EMR Lacking any of the traditional
Gehry back of house budget-meeting boxes to which forms
are draped; the EMP plan appears organic in nature. With the
exception of "Sky Church", the remaining five programmatic
volumes have seemingly chance encounters of surfaces,
materials, or forms.
Figure 7
Behind this seemingly disordered outlook, there is an
enormous organization without which it would be impossible
to build such designs in reality. Gehry adopted a number of
various advanced technologies to facilitate the construction
of the EMR The most important tool being the CATIA
(Computer Aided Three-dimensional Interactive Application}
software used to model the building three-dimensionally. As
an adaptation from aerospace Industry, this software has the
ability to flatten complex multiple-curved surfaces which can
then be used as a template to cut them into pieces. At EMP
the flattened shapes of exterior panel cladding were cut using
CAD/CAM and CNC (Computer Aided Drafting/Computer
Aided Manufacturing, Computer Numerically Controlled)
milling machines one by one and bending them back into
their shape before mounting them in place on the building
using GPS location devices and a highly customized mounting
system which allows for adjustment (Linn, 2000, p. 175). One
peculiar aspect in this construction process needs to be
mentioned is the employment of custom-made elements,
which represents an important change in the logic of building
production. The use of custom-made pieces is one of the
elements that makes Gehry's architecture unique, but at the
same time makes it troubling. No two panels are similar out of
the roughly four thousand panels covering the EMP exterior.
Although the process of creating templates and cutting the
shapes was highly automated by way of CATIA, these complex
shapes had to be hand bent into their final shape and hand-
assembled to include the necessary structural supportive
metal fin framing. Each panel holds about seven shingles each
of which has a unique shape and size. Each shingle is tailored
to fit exactly in its designed location and each panel Is woven
together in situ. As a result, the building's surface looks like a
patchwork fabric.
The notion of patchwork fabric, 1 have just Introduced, can be
further studied considering a specific set of buildings. From the
EMP, to the Jay Pritzker Pavilion In Millennium Park In Chicago
(2004) (here 1 can add Springfield Concert Hall projecttoo), there
is an apparent change in the surface treatment. The enveloping
surface wrapping around the building, as in Bilbao, became
continually {but unexpectedly) interrupted or broken in Gehry's
later projects such as the Millennium Park pavilion. This frayed
characteristic of the building's surface reveals the thinness of
the surface, thus exposing the artificiality of his gesture.
Figure 8
The consequence of this series of interruptions on the
metal surface is "the frayed and torn drapery," demanding
the attention of the viewer and aspiring to the status of
an autonomous sculptural object. Here, I would like to
draw attention to the pattern of the draped surface. As