It’s fairly simple to get to commodity and firmness, and rather tricky to get to delight.  So I was pleased to stumble across this image of Frank Gehry when searching for images of his iconic Santa Monica house.  It’s a 1972 photo that has the young architect demonstrating how sturdy his new Easy Edge line of cardboard furniture, specifically this desk, is.  It’s an image I have never seen before, an image of architecture and joy.

Of all contemporary architects Gehry might be the only one who is able to express pleasure in his work: pleasure in materials, pleasure in construction, and pleasure in form-making.  There’s a playful, kinetic freedom in his most memorable buildings (his own house, the Norton House, the Dancing House, the New York Tower) that might be its defining characteristic.  Key in all this is that Gehry lives and works in America (he’s Canadian by birth), and specifically in southern California.  It’s hard to imagine a European sourpuss like Rem Koolhaus, or an east coast American sourpuss like David Childs, posing for this kind of picture, or making cardboard furniture in the first place.  The joy comes from the man.