where he described his long held interest in Asia and how this has informed his other work.
"I became intrigued with it, Japan, China, Korea … It was easy to transfer that language into a Southern California wood building residential".
"It's not a playground. It's serious stuff to deal with buildings in another culture. You have to respect the culture. You have to take the time to try and understand it- of course you never get it perfect."
Martin Cubbon of Swire Properties revealed in a Bloomberg interview that the building cost $27, 000 per square foot to construct whereas the average Hong Kong apartment costs between $4000 and $20,000.
The excess of the new building goes against 82 year old Gehry's ethos of not building houses for 'rich guys' and although he was reticent to accept the job at first, it proved to be too good of an opportunity to pass up.
"I just thought, at my age, to start a whole new thing, a new culture, would be complicated. But then I became intrigued with it."
"It’s an honour to be called to do a building, especially on a site like this, on the Peak in Hong Kong. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I accepted it that way, and I wanted it to be special."
Gehry went on to describe the uniformity of modern architecture yet sees a new artistic frontier opening up in Asia and specifically China.
"It's the same in every place in the world. The buildings that are built in Central look like buildings built in downtown Seoul. There is a commercial opportunism that doesn't speak to core values of humanity, it speaks to bottom line stuff."
"The Chinese art world is exploding. There are hundreds of incredible artists making artworks today in China that are having a big impact on the West. They’re learning from Warhol, but they’re taking it somewhere. There’s a special Chinese sense of humor that’s being injected into it that’s rawer and more confrontational and more down-to-earth somehow. That intrigues me."
Image: Gizmodo
