Hasta La Ideas

Last week, we were telling you all about the hard times starchitect Frank Gehry has been going through. But even while he was fighting through this latest battle, another kerfuffle had apparently been on the rise, all surrounding Gehry’s recent appearance at the Aspen Ideas Festival, wherein Gehry became a bit upset about an audience member’s question and waived the person off. While this initially seemed like a one-time, quiet incident, things changed a bit with the fact that The Atlantic‘s James Fallows was in the crowd for the event, who wound up reporting on what happened. Following that, the whole thing snowballed, with Fallows finding out that the offended audience member was Fred Kent, the esteemed president of the Project for Public Spaces project who had even spoken at that very same conference several years prior. From there, the topic kept going, with Fallows giving Kent some time to share his opinions, Gehry responding by email, etc. The whole thing is far too lengthy to get into here, but our pals at Curbed LA have a complete rundown from start to finish (or at least where we’re at right now). Highly recommended reading.