mputer shortcut was expected to "balance the percentage of straight, curved and wiggly shapes so that the overall skin would cost $12 million" (Betsky, 1995, p. 23). In an account of project problems that appeared in October 1995, Betsky was blaming a "Byzantine design and construction process" for confusion about site use and staggering construction bids.
Although hailed as a computer pioneer, Gehry actually takes a middle way in his use of computerization in his practice. Unlike such architects as Peter Eisenman, who is known for using the computer screen itself as a conceptual starting point, Gehry still prefers the tactility and responsiveness of physical models for design development stages. But computers come into the fore with the complex process of transferring irregular and imaginative shapes into the solidity of concrete and stone. The Catia software on IBM RISC 6000 computers used by the practice was originally developed by French aerospace experts Dassault Systems for the design of fighter planes. According to Annette LeCuyer, writing in the January 1995 Architectural Review, "this software is significant because it is based on surfaces in lieu of polygons" (LeCuyer, 1995, p. 76), facilitating the visualization of irregular and complex shapes. Among many industrial uses, the Catia system enabled Chrysler Corporation to
"compete successfully with Japanese manufacturers by reducing the research and development period for new models from 72 to 36 months" (LeCuyer, 1995, p. 76).
Successive levels of computer digitization facilitate the computer screen's effort to capture the plasticity of Gehry's concert hall design even in materials as unforgiving and rectangular as stone. A wire-frame computer model of the concert hall structure and a computer model for patterning of the stone cladding is followed by a mockup of a stone wall cut with numerically controlled equipment.
First, the database of the digitized d...