Frank Gehry, you either love him, hate him, or just don’t understand him. The native of Toronto has created architectural gems around the world including the titanium-covered Guggenheim Museum in Spain, the Experience Music Project in Seattle, as well as the Dancing House in Prague. One of his more recent projects sits on the outskirts of Sin City, but rest assured that Mr. Gehry has not resorted to designing Vegas casinos. Instead, his latest creation is the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, which is comprised of two different styles that crash and reverberate at a point of connection.
While some may interpret the building’s design as a the typical sort of chaos, which Gehry has become famous for, the Lou Ruvo Center was created with an eye towards the left and right hemisphere’s of the brain. Upon further inspection, you should notice the left side has clean lines, and is organized by vertically stacked compartments. This balances off the melted chaos of the right, but how does all this represent the brain you ask? As reported by Edward Lifson of Hello Beautiful!:
The left side of the brain processes information in a linear manner. It takes pieces, lines them up, and arranges them in a logical order.
The right side of the brain processes more holistically, from the whole to the parts. The right-brain sees the big picture first and breaks it down into the details. It works in a more random way; and the right-brain is color sensitive.
To oversimplify: the left-brain is more reality-based; the right-brain processes using fantasy.
I wonder which side dominates the mind of Frank Gehry?