Architecture, step by step

Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2006 | 7:15 a.m.

What: Frank Gehry Designs

Where: Las Vegas Art Museum

When: Wednesday through March 25

Admission: $6; $5; $3 for students; free for children under 12; call 360-8000

When it comes to architect Frank Gehry, there's a joke among the uninitiated. A demonstration, you might call it. Someone grabs a sheet of paper, asks if you know how Gehry designs buildings, then crumples the paper to display a seemingly thoughtless and whimsical effort.

Not exactly, as we learn from the Las Vegas Art Museum's comprehensive look at Gehry's design of the Lou Ruvo Brain Institute. The exhibit, which opens Wednesday, demystifies the thought process of the architect whose sculptural style comes from artistic influences, rather than mathematical and engineering concepts.

Gehry works backward to the point that he's now paperless: pushing blocks around, folding, bending and taping materials together with never having drawn out a formal blueprint, then using a "digitizer" - a computer-assisted program that measures and translates his models - to create the rest.

The resulting free-flowing spectacles, wild romps into the unconventional, sometimes draw more attention to the building itself rather than what it houses. The sloping metallic wonders have become an unmistakable thumbprint.

"It took the attention of the world when he designed the building in Bilbao," architectural critic Alan Hess says in reference to the Guggenheim in Spain. "He shakes up our sensibilities, our expectations of what a building is. He's definitely going way outside of conventional expectations of architecture and is in some ways inviting conversation, which is good. Whether they love it or not, they're talking about it.

"And he's not just joking. It is important and serious. There is a whole strain of architecture seen as abstract sculpture and as abstract forms seen in the landscape."

Desert images from Utah and Nevada were part of the inspiration used in conceptualizing the Lou Ruvo Brain Institute, a research, treatment and care center for patients with memory disorders, dementia and neurodegenerative diseases. The institute is scheduled to break ground in February and be completed in 2008 at a projected cost of $65 million to $70 million.

The more than 120-piece exhibit at the art museum begins with the sketches and the colored blocks that Gehry pushed around to create structures, then moves into study and final models made of paper, tissue, wood and acrylic resin. It's the first Gehry show that follows the step-by-step design process of a single project, and it is LVAM's first architecture exhibit.

"At first we were concerned that a design show wouldn't be as interesting as paintings," says Libby Lumpkin, director of the Las Vegas Art Museum.

"But it's really interesting and no one has ever done a show like this. We're proud of that."

There was also the issue of cost. Shipping and insurance brought the exhibit's tab to between $400,000 and $500,000 - making it the museum's most expensive show. Larry Ruvo contributed a portion through Southern Wine & Spirits of America, but the exhibit's primary sponsor was Lawyer Trane, a mechanical services company. Thomas Lawyer is on LVAM's board of trustees.

Because the models and drawings are so fresh and hadn't been archived, the works for the exhibit were shipped piecemeal with items arriving as late as Monday. The exhibit also includes models of Guggenheim Bilbao, the Disney Concert Hall, Museum of Tolerance and Maggie's Centre in Scotland.

The Las Vegas Art Museum's exhibit includes every existing model used for creating the Lou Ruvo Brain Institute's design, which is wrapped in a warped steel trellis. The exhibit also includes models for kiosk shops inside the institute. Even the "dead ends" in Gehry's thought process are on display.

What you won't see are miles of architectural plans. Gehry's digitized process can directly spit out the 3-D models, which makes you wonder how Antoni Gaudi, whose curvy works are planted throughout Barcelona, ever managed.