Frank Gehry and Robert Tannen Old Faubourg & Old Friends
by: Thaddeus Zarse | posted: Oct 4, 2009
Going back for nearly forty years, the New Orleans-based artist, urban planner, and general provocateur, Robert Tannen, of Creative Industry, has been working with his famed friend Frank Gehry, the internationally renowned Los Angeles architect, on a variety of projects throughout New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region. The relationship was initially forged while Tannen was working for the New Orleans mayor’s office, where he found himself acting as an ally to Gehry, who was working on a small stage in Lafayette Park, dealing with the idea of transparency to create a space which disappeared into the landscape of the park. While the project never made it to fruition, the two had solidified a personal and professional friendship that led to further work.
The next decade did not necessarily bode any better for Gehry in New Orleans, however. While he was selected as the architect for a riverfront auditorium for the 1984 World’s Fair, the project was stripped away from the office for fear of being over budget, and was greatly modified to reduce costs. Tannen’s role in the World’s Fair was more geared toward the development and political angle, where he pushed to have the Fair’s buildings designed so that they could be utilized upon the Fair’s conclusion, assisting in the revitalization of the Warehouse District. While this idea seems somewhat obvious—having seen urban planning strategies for many past Olympic Games executed with just this in mind—at the time it was considered radical. While some of his efforts were successful, the modified Gehry auditorium was eventually demolished, erasing his legacy in the city.
Their next effort began as Tannen and his wife, Jeanne Nathan, President of the Creative Alliance of New Orleans, convinced former Biloxi, Mississippi, mayor Jerry O’Keefe to select Gehry as the architect of the new Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art, to be constructed on the Biloxi coastline. The project was severely damaged during Hurricane Katrina when a casino barge took out some of the buildings still under construction, as well as existing buildings on the site, and many large trees which were integrated into the design. The project, now largely underway, promises to be a great addition to contemporary architecture in the region and will undoubtedly be a sign of success in the South for an architect long overdue.
With Gehry and Tannen’s newest collaboration, the dynamic of the relationship has changed. As Tannen notes, typically “the working relationship with Frank (Gehry) has been as political dealmaker rather than as planner or designer.” With the recently developed Modgun project, the initial generator was Tannen’s design of a modular prototype for housing based on the historic housing type of the shotgun, hence the name Modgun. As Tannen states, regarding the history of the housing type, “the shotgun was a major nineteenth century innovation based on an African-Caribbean design for long New Orleans lots.” The shotgun has found its way into Tannen’s work in many areas aside from the Modgun design, such as a jewelry line for Mignon Faget and a variety of metal sculptures.
Typically, a shotgun house fits into narrow, dense lots. Because of this density, the houses are understood primarily from the exterior vantage point of their facades, and an interior spatial understanding of walking from one room to another, known as enfilade. Tannen reframes the understanding of the shotgun, forming it into a sculptural object understood three dimensionally as a typological form. One module was constructed by Chris Meehan and Joel Ross for Tannen’s retrospective at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. In talking about the continued development of the project, Joel Ross states, “The configuration can change…a Creole cottage, L-shaped, camelbacks, basically anything, but we didn’t think of twisting it,” which was the strategy developed by Gehry’s team. Gehry’s Project Designer Partner, Craig Webb, states, “We take his (Tannen’s) system and design a house based on that system…Our plan was to take these modules, which were pretty well laid out already, and just do a little twist and put the roof on it, trying to keep the cost to a minimum while putting a little movement into it.” The Gehry team also includes Tensho Takemori, Brian Zamora, Jeffery Sipprell, and Katya Obretenova.
This twist of the module does several important things for the work. Initially, it allows for a screened porch to be used as the means of circulation between modules, or rooms, which alleviates the common problem for the shotgun of having to go through someone’s bedroom in order to circulate to other spaces. From a use standpoint this is very important, but what the twist does from a perceptual standpoint is far greater; it allows the shotgun to be read as a series of objects, something of interest in Tannen’s other work, but more fully achieved in the Modgun. By detaching and rotating the modules, users are able to see and experience nearly all sides of each module, which allows a more three dimensional understanding of the work. The Gehry-Tannen Modgun is both understood as a dynamic object and as space in motion.
Because the design is comprised of detached modules, their rotation does relatively little to raise the cost of construction. The project aims to be affordably constructed as infill for the Faubourg Treme neighborhood by local developer and longtime friend of Tannen, Hal Brown, of Fortuné Development, LLC. Ray Manning, the local architect in charge of construction documents for the project, asks, “Is it feasible? We are going to have to work very hard in conjunction with the contractor to get at the developer’s price point. It is a challenge in this marketplace.” Senior Project Architect for Manning, Miwako Hattori, relayed that the office is currently looking at three options for construction methods. “One is to have it built by a modular company; the second option is to use structurally insulated panels, so most of the exterior components are constructed offsite but built on-site. The third option is a traditionally framed building.” Global Green, a nationally recognized sustainability non-profit, is also assisting with the project to make sure it is as environmentally responsible as possible, and is planning on attaining a LEED certification once constructed. As they say, it takes a village, or in this case, a network, of both locally and internationally renowned friends to raise a house.
If architectural theoretician Jeff Kipnis is correct in his statement that architecture is a method to tell stories about ourselves, then what does the Modgun say to us? Maybe that in the cultural, social, and political complexity of the city of New Orleans, contemporary life needs new narratives; narratives which build upon the past, but also point to a new direction; narratives which use novelty to formulate new relationships between individuals and the collective whole.
