Guest Speaker: Frank Cheney

On Friday the 26th we had Frank Cheney as a guest speaker talking about his experiences with architecture and design. Some of the things that he covered reflected what we are reading about in our textbook. Such as context is important and that design should be functional and solve the problem at hand first and then look good at the same time. The key to successful architecture and design is that it be functional but beautiful at the same time because something can look great without working well and vise versa. I learned that although there are a lot of people who want someone to be able to stand at the front door and be able to see all the way though the house to the view in the back that it is better to make them go around the house and then have them reach the room with the view to catch them by surprise and make them say "oh wow". Cheney also talked about Frank Gehry's architecture and how he calls his buildings "art" and they are but they do not fit into the context they are in. For example, Gehry's "Dancing Building" in Prague does not fit in with any of the architecture in its immediate neighborhood.

http://www.ideachampions.com/weblogs/archives/2007/07/frank_gehrys_de.shtml

Frank Cheney talked about how important it is to know the history of architecture. He said "it is better to use an old idea well than a new idea badly." 

Cheney told us about using a Butterfly Plan for buildings facing several different beautiful views so that people inside the building can experience all of the views. An example of a butterfly plan building is the one below because it has a central section and then two wings coming off of each side to make the building look like a butterfly flapping its wings.

http://www.primelocationblog.com/uk/tag/butterfly-plan

Design should be timeless and be able to last though the years and still belong. This is where there is a problem with Frank Gehry's architecture because his architecture is a work of art but his designs are not timeless. 

I enjoyed having Frank Cheney as a guest speaker because he had a lot of interesting things to say and the information that he provided will be helpful to us though out our education in architecture and design.