Letter: Gehry’s design is one of pure shock

Saturday, Feb. 18, 2006 | 12:30 p.m.

I respect Tom Gorman's right in his Feb. 17 column to comment on Frank Gehry's conceptual design for the Lou Ruvo Alzheimer's Institute, however, as a designer myself, I disagree with another point of view. He mentions many bizarre designs up and down the Strip. Does that mean they are good or bad? I guess that would be a matter of opinion, as they say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And depending on "who" that beholder is, it's a matter of opinion as well.

I must say that Mr. Gehry's design has some good qualities to the building-block design of the main medical building, but that's where it ends. No matter how you define the rest of the checkerboard shell of steel lattice, it will never be as exciting or playful as Mr. Gorman says.

The area of this steel lattice is cold and austere and more defined as a lack of creativity, like someone suffering from Alzheimer's. I'm sure Mr. Gehry is or was a fine designer of architecture, but his attempt to create such an object of design is one of pure shock to make a statement.

As Mr. Gorman said, there are some great designs up and down the Strip, but the new direction of designs does not define Las Vegas with its new glass facades or the new Wynn hotel that looks like a version of the old Fountain Bleu in Miami Beach. Las Vegas has been built on a fantasy for adults, and if the new direction continues with nothing more than bent steel and glass surfaces, it truly will change.

Not everyone is as backward as Mr. Gorman may think or drives Edsels with their Keystone-swilling relatives stuffed inside. And, as he says, people will always be laughing at Las Vegas, because there is no place like it on Earth. However, they keep coming to see this city built on the fantasy for adults.

The future remains to be seen.

Joseph De Meis, Las Vegas