I took a lot of photos of the Disney concert hall, as I had made a detour to see it on my last morning in LA. I posted this one in particular because I thought the car added quite a lot to it, particularly given that it is an interesting looking car. (There are lots of interesting looking cars on American roads, much more than in Europe or Australia).

A think I find interesting about your comment is that both of Gehry’s most famous buildings (the Disney Hall and the Bilbao Guggenheim) actually fit in extremely well with their surroundings. This is particularly so in Bilbao, where an industrial age bridge over the river Nervon is practically part of the structure, and one of the main streets of the city is also gently integrated into the building. And yet they are usually photographed so as to hide this. I don’t know if this is part of the “starchitect” thing - somehow the official photographs have to try to portray the architect as working on a clean slate - but it seems to leave out a big part of why Gehry is such a good architect.  (I have actually blogged about this before).

Just as a further aside, of the 27 photos I posted, I actually posted two of “starchitect” designed music halls with cars and roads in front, the second building being the Casa da Musica at Boavista in Porto. (Rem Koolhaas). I didn’t capture that one as well, I think, partly because I didn’t have the right lens to capture the whole building, partly because of luck, and partly because the way in which the internal and external flourishes of the building blend into one another is complex. (Actually I need to make a blog post just about this building).