Video: Frank Gehry On Charlie Rose

In this interview with Charlie Rose, architect Frank Gehry talks about his life and work. He tells the talk-show host that while considering succession, he’s enjoying working and sharing his knowledge with younger architects, but worries that he hasn’t allowed them to make mistakes and therefore grow professionally.

At one point he gives some insight into his motivations:

I’ve been talking to neuroscientists about [the creative process]. They want to say that if you do square, that’s one thing. If you do round, that’s another. And I say to them, that’s trivial stuff. Go bigger, go further out. Why do we do it in the first place? What’s in it for us? What’s in it for — why are you doing it? You’re doing it because you want to make people happy. You enter these creative fields because you want to play to an audience. It’s what you do. It’s the same thing. We’re looking for some kind of approval from the world around us, and we want to make them happy. When a client comes in and hugs me and says this is fantastic, I love it. Like the concert hall, 100 plus musicians came at me and they did a touch when I walked on stage. It’s rare. That was it. It’s great. It was worth it.

But that’s what the neurosurgeons should be asking, I think, not whether it should be square or round, or snake-shaped or what. Because I mean, that’s a detail. I think the big picture is why do we want to do it, and why does the audience want it? Why do people go to Disney Hall? Why is it filled every night? Because they feel the orchestra. I mean, it’s a real simple thing, from the beginning. If the orchestra hears each other as they play, they play better, and over time they get better and better and better and better because they are playing together.

When they play better, the audience knows it. And if the room is designed so that there’s a connection, so there’s not a proscenium and separation, that you’re in the same room, you feel the relationship to the musicians. You can see them. You can — when you feel that, you get excited, I mean, you respond. And when you respond as an audience, the performers feel it.

Charlie Rose (and full transcript)