Subject
Pale Fire echo?
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----- Forwarded message from chaiselongue@earthlink.net -----
Date: Sun, 09 Jan 2005 08:29:43 -0800
From: Carolyn <chaiselongue@earthlink.net>
Dear Don,
I was reading an article on Frank Gehry's plans for his new house and was
struck by this passage's seeming reference to Pale Fire:
For all his insistence on not dwelling in the past, Mr. Gehry allows a few
fond recollections. One of the details he loves most in his old house is a
large, asymmetrical skylight that breaks through a corner of the dining
room, framing a view of an enormous pine tree. At night, the glass panels
pick up fragments of unexpected views - a light left on in the yard, his
wife drifting though the living room.
Here, that detail is harnessed for an entire building. The structure's
fractured glass skin will refract images of the trees and houses outside and
of people moving around inside, like an indoor-outdoor hall of mirrors. Mr.
Gehry plans to blur the boundary between the private and public realms by
creating a series of mechanized glass panels that open like garage doors.
It is as if someone had taken a hammer to the pure abstract forms of Mr.
Johnson's famous house. Glass here is as much about illusion as about
transparency, suggesting that daily existence consists of multiple mutable
realities.
I don't know if it's worth posting to the List though? By the way, I keep
waiting to hear your impressions of the MLA this year?
Carolyn
----- End forwarded message -----