El Pez / The Fish: Frank Gehry, Barcelona http://socratesarchitects.com

1. El Pez/ The Olympic Fish, by Frank Gehry
Nicholas Socrates
2008
Shimmering in the sunlight,
This organic wave like form,
whilst walking along the beach or promenade, gives the view of the sky line a great sense
of relief, especially from the two sky scrappers.
This fish is very pleasant to look at.

2. As you come off the beach into its immediate surrounding – in line with it – you can see
through it
You can look into the fish
To see inside it and see through it
It really is a lot less solid than it appears from a distance – from the beach
It’s like looking at a tree close up;
Everything behind it is factually abstracted.

3. This jelly-fish like form is so
pleasing.
with full turgidity, this is a very
healthy fish.
Its colour is so warm, and it
makes me smile.
It is so light:
it is just floating there, hovering,
about to fly off and jump into
the water.
This fish is perfect.
With such a strong structure,
This fish, out of water, is tied to
the city.
He is content to be here as a
public sceptical, however;
he longs and dreams of
returning to the Ocean.
and one day he will. And
he knows himself that he will.
This fish exists here beautifully.
In 1989 Architect Frank Gehry began his monumental fish sculpture for
the Olympic Village for the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.
Ever since childhood Gehry had a fascination about the movement of fish
The movement of
fish had remained a
vivid image in his
mind. Gehry had an
intense interest in
movement –
studying it and
trying to incorporate
a sense of
movement into
static, or immobile,
materials.

4. The Olympics fish sculpture marked a turning point in the history of
Frank O Gehry & Associates. For the first time, the firm used a
computer-aided design and manufacturing program in their work.
The firm adopted computer aided three – dimensional interactive
application (CATIA). Without this, some of Gehry’s most exiting
buildings could not have been possible.
Although Gehry designs using sketches and physical models, the
computer can check those designs before construction. The
computer simplifies the construction process.
For years, Frank Gehry has been concerned with fish imagery. Here,
his fish fixation is manifested by a 35 metre x 54 metre fish made
of steel lattice. The fish marks the start of the Olympic Port area
and is placed at the base of two landmark towers.
One of the towers is the Hotel Arts, the work of the architects Bruce
Graham and Gehry himself, with 44 floors and 456 bedrooms; the
other is the Mapfre Tower, designed by Ortiz and Enrique de Leon,
an office building with a commercial centre on the ground floor.
These two towers have a height of 153.5 m and are the highest in
Spain
As an artwork this fish grabs the eye for its scale and as its copper
colour shining in the bright sunlight.