Frank Gehry Case Study: California Aerospace Museum

The Aerospace Museum at Exhibition Park, California, is one of Frank Gehry's early works, and one of his first museum commissions. The Aerospace Museum is part of the larger California Science Center, which includes several other structures by other architects. Even at this early stage, Gehry's work incorporated the distinctive style he adapted from previous residential projects, creating geometric shifts and irregular angular forms which break from the spacial bounding of the base structure.

The structure is segmented, comprising of a union of differentiated pieces brought together in a spacial collage of artistic style and architectural form. The Museum's exterior has the signature sculptural style that permeates Gehry's work, with  the facade of the building an arrangement of intricate stylistic components: a large metal-skinned polygon, a glass wall with a windowed prism above it, and a stucco cube with a hangar door. Above this aircraft hangar door is an F-104 Lockheed Model G Starfighter Jet poised in mid-flight, jutting out from the structure as both artistic statement and . The purpose of the structure is reinforced through these materials, with the building itself as an abstraction of aircraft and their environment. 

This notion of reflection is what makes the Aerospace Museum outstanding in the Gehry body of work, the building itself is an exploration of what the museum contains, an example of the power of purposeful architecture, which Gehry blends so effectively with abstract sculptural forms.

The interior of the Museum is as dynamic as its exterior, designed to give patrons an uninhibited experience of the museum, with the freedom to explore in a non-linear fashion through the buildings circulatory system of ramps, flanking stairs and platforms that bring viewers through the museum at multiple elevations, around the suspended aircraft on display. The use of skylights is a necessity for the illumination of the interior spaces, however Gehry again takes a unique approach to these elements, incorporating them into walls, angling and rotating them to become architectural elements within themselves, rather than simply utilities.

REFERENCES

http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/aero/aero.html,  Mary Ann Sullivan

http://www.pritzkerprize.com/laureates/1989/works02.html, Michael Moran

http://vkkathy.multiply.com/photos/album/16/arch31-SketchModel_of_Gehrys_Aerospace_Museum

Aerospace Hall, California Science Center, Los Angeles 1982-84. “Frank Gehry, Architect.” J Fiona Ragheb, ed. New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2001: 61.