More Videos
- 3D's Tipping Point and Your Living Room
- Silicon Valley and Hollywood Now Fast Friends
- HP Comes in As Expected; Is It Time to Buy?
- Apple Comes to AT&T's Rescue
- My Top 10 Tech Toys for the Holidays
- iPhone a Better Gaming Platform Than Android?
- Dell Has Some Explaining to Do
- Dell May Start to Show Some Promise
- Has Twitter's Finest Hours (Seconds) Come and Gone?
- Intel's Andy Bryant Offers An Explanation
MOST SHARED
- The Executive Job Search
- S&P Stocks Trading at New 52-Week Highs
- Where Do Pardoned Turkeys Go?
- Judge Erases Couple's $525,000 Mortgage Payment
- Activision Prepares to Double Dip on ‘Modern Warfare 2’
- Salvation Army's Kettles Now Credit Card-Ready
- US Mint to Suspend American Eagle Gold 1-Ounce Coins
- Black Friday: Can Banks Tap the Frenzy, Too?
- Foreign Demand Boosts US 7-Year Treasury Sale
- Oil Friday
- 4 Thanksgiving Week Buys For Your Portfolio: Market Pros
- There's a 'Great Chance' For a Double-Dip Recession: Strategist
- Revenge of the Gangsta Nerds
- Will TCU See The "Flutie Effect?"
- Retail Earnings and Sales to Improve in Q4: Analyst
- Consumers Catching the Holiday Spirit
- It's Beginning To Look A Lot More Riskless
- Crescenzi: Claims Level Suggests End to Job Losses
- Hedge Funds Take Early Lead in Warren Buffett's 'Big Bet'
- AIG, Ex-CEO Greenberg Reach Pact to Settle Disputes
- Bank of America CEO Search May Extend Into 2010
- Steepest Black Friday Discounts, Revealed
- 'Cancer of Fraud' Permeates Health Care System: Critics
- US Mint to Suspend American Eagle Gold 1-Ounce Coins
- Judge Erases Couple's $525,000 Mortgage Payment
- For Many in US, It Will Be a Scaled-Down Holiday Season
- Where Do Pardoned Turkeys Go?
- Jobless Claims Below 500,000, Durable Orders Slip
RSS FEED
Tech Check
Text Size 
 |
Craig and Kathryn Hall |
When it came time for Napa Valley power couple Craig Hall and his wife Kathryn to take their boutique winery to that next level, their first stop on their journey brought them to architect Frank Gehry. He's known for his unsurpassed ability to express movement in world-famous structures like the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain and the Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. He blends technology, nature, and creative detail, and the Halls thought he would be the perfect match to the kinds of wines they're making.
"You want to have a space to share your wines. That is really an experience and that's what I think we are creating here in this facility. An experience," says Kathryn, a former ambassador to Austria under President Bill Clinton. "There is a lot of pleasure in the experience of making things and seeing them built and seeing people use them and enjoying them. That's great pleasure," a reflective Gehry tells us in a rare, lengthy sit-down interview about this latest project.
Billionaire investor Craig Hall, with a $300 million stake in American Airlines [AMR
Loading...
()
] , among numerous real estate holdings, was clear on his plans for the new facility: "We would like to see it being an inside/outside building, respecting nature with lots of glass and wood." And that's precisely what Gehry offered up: a $100 million, 110,000 square foot winery "experience" scheduled to open three years from now. "Frank sees things that most of us never see. And the he sort of brings you along," Kathryn says.
Gehry's Disney Concert Hall took 16 years to complete, a project only possible after computer technology proved his unique, complex designs could be transformed into an actual building. The same thing happened with the Hall's winery project, which all began with a single scribble on a piece of paper as Gehry was leaving the property after seeing it that first time.
From there, his team of designers, engineers and staff architects get to work, building hundreds of tiny models to see what the building will look like in 3D.
"The models are like little kids playing with toys, so as you work on the models, it brings you back to the child in you and to be a child is to be creative," says his partner Edwin Chan. If Frank is the pencil, industry experts have said, Chan is the eraser, charged with transforming Gehry's wild concepts into something buildable.
"It's a simple idea, it's not a rocket science idea," Gehry tells me in his Santa Monica, California studio. "It's complex, but it's not that hard."
The winery's signature structure will be a must-see wooden trellis enveloping the building as if you'd thrown a burlap blanket over it; a design so striking that it stops visitors in their tracks, even as it emphasizes movement.
"The trellis, which is sun protection, actually becomes the building ephemeral in a way. That was interesting. We have not done that before," he says. Gehry's designs respond to the torrid pace of the modern lifestyle, and his creativity makes sure his structures don't get lost in the madness of motion. "The scene we are in is one of airplanes and cars, boats, everything is moving fast, fast, fast. So the idea is to express movement like in an airplane, like in a car, in a building. It appeals to me as an idea," he says.
The winery will be stunning, but most of all, it'll be memorable, like Gehry's other well-known creations. "You see the damn thing finished and you say, I couldn't have been that good that I did that," he says.
FYI: I'm out of the office tomorrow (Thursday) but will be back on Friday with more blog posts.
Questions? Comments?
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes