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Brilliant Careers
Frank Gehry
His titanium masterpiece in Bilbao, Spain, has put "the other Frank," architect of "the other Guggenheim" museum, on the map.
By Karen Templer
[10/05/99]

People Feature
Frankly, it's a bore
A humorless look at the class clown of architecture.
By Karen Templer
[10/05/99]

Nothing Personal
The dung show
Psychotic reactions to elephant dung; Jesse Ventura ups the ante; Mormon TV snips the naughty bits. Plus, Susan Lucci gets her gun.
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[10/04/99]

People Feature
Biography avoidance techniques of the rich and reclusive
Wanted: Brilliant biographers who won't write about Howard Hughes and J.D. Salinger. Bullies need not apply.
By Lorenzo W. Milam
[10/04/99]

People Feature
Donn Pohren, flamenco's hero
Over a bottle of vino tinto, the first non-Spaniard ever awarded the title "flamencologist" talks about one of the world's most vibrant folk arts.
By Jon B. Rhine
[10/02/99]

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Brilliant Careers: Frank Gehry Portfolio of Gehry's work Gehry's chroniclers lay a brick

The answer to that question, of course, is anyone's guess, and depends largely upon the usual mix of factors that bedevils the architectural enterprise: a client with money to pay a commission, getting others to cooperate in executing your architectural vision (a special challenge when that vision is as famously eccentric as Gehry's) and the ability to coordinate the activities of myriad workers and craftspeople in support of a single goal. But of all possible projects that may command Gehry's time and attention as he enters his eighth decade, perhaps none is as tantalizing in its possibilities as Gehry's likely role in the redevelopment of the Panama Canal.

At noon on Dec. 31 of this year, the United States will hand over its remaining authority over the canal zone to the Republic of Panama. This amounts to the last step in a gradual transfer of control over one of the world's most significant maritime routes -- a 50-mile stretch containing three locks that links the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Not surprisingly, the imminent transfer has unleashed a welter of forces inside Panama, all tussling with one another for the rights to be the one to turn a profit in the canal zone.

The Panamanian entity charged with managing the zone, the Autoridad de la Región Interoceania, or ARI, launched its management under a cloud. ARI rented homes on a reverted U.S. air base on highly favorable terms to cronies of former Panamanian President Ernesto Perez Balladares -- instead of auctioning them to the general public, as had been promised. The former president's administration insisted that no corruption was involved. Still, the scandal fed popular suspicion that the reversion of the canal would benefit an entrenched elite and not the entire nation.

ARI Director Nicolas Ardita Barleta then announced plans to redevelop the canal with hotels, a golf course and casinos -- plans that, to some, promised to turn Panama into a ticky-tacky Central American Atlantic City. Gehry would never have been asked to review these plans except for what he calls his "serendipitous relationship to the country." His wife, Bertha, is Panamanian by birth, and for a quarter-century the Gehrys have spent one week a year in Panama visiting her family.

In April 1998, his wife's cousin, a dentist, helped draw Gehry into canal redevelopment. Rodrigo Eisenman is not just any dentist. He is also the cousin of Roberto Eisenman, one of Panama's most prominent citizens. In the 1980s, as owner and editor of the opposition newspaper La Prensa, Roberto Eisenman was one of the few people who consistently dared to rail publicly against the abuses of Panamanian strongman Gen. Manuel Noriega. Rodrigo, the dentist, introduced the two men. Gehry was taken by Roberto, whom he describes as "a land owner, an idealist. Obviously a fighter. One of the best people they have."

When Roberto Eisenman showed him Nicky Barleta's development plans, "I was kind of freaked out," Gehry recalls. "It was low-level, 10th-rate casino development." He remembers that "Rodrigo and Bobby wanted me to go to the canal. They were interested in reflagging land-use projects." Initially, Gehry says, he balked. "What's a gringo going to do?" he asked the cousins. But they insisted, he says, that "your opinion would, if made known, change this."

This discussion led Eisenman, who is now a special advisor to Panama's newly elected populist President Mireya Moscoso, to introduce Gehry to Hana Ayala. Ayala, the Czech-born wife of Francisco Ayala, President Clinton's science and technology advisor, heads an eco-tourism consulting firm in Orange County, Calif. She also is the driving force behind the grandly titled "Tourism-Conservation-Research Action Plan."

TCR aims to produce a model for development that will be both financially lucrative and ecologically sensitive. This is of no small consequence as Panama faces the prospect of runaway development: The country sustains more than 80 percent of North American shore birds that spend winters in its biologically sensitive mangrove swamps. It is rich with still-untouched rain forests. In addition, Panama contains an abundance of 16th century Spanish ruins -- historic sites that require immediate preservation work if they are not simply to go the way of the conquistadors.

Next page | Gehry's grand vision for the bridge between the Americas