el pez, frank gehry, barcelona

7/31/2019 El Pez, Frank Gehry, Barcelona

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El Pez/ The Olympic Fish, by Frank Gehry

Nicholas Socrates2008

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 senseof relief, especially from the two sky scrappers.


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As you come off the beach into its immediate surrounding in line with it you can seethrough it

You can look into the fish

To see inside it and see through itIt really is a lot less solid than it appears from a distance from the beach

Its like looking at a tree close up;Everything behind it is factually abstracted.


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This jelly-fish like form is sopleasing.

with full turgidity, this is a veryhealthy 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 tothe city.

He is content to be here as apublic sceptical, however;

he longs and dreams ofreturning to the Ocean.

and one day he will. Andhe knows himself that he will.

In 1989 Architect Frank Gehry began his monumental fish sculpture forthe Olympic Village for the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.

Ever since childhood Gehry had a fascination about the movement of fish

The movement offish had remained avivid image in hismind. Gehry had an

intense interest inmovement studying it andtrying to incorporatea sense ofmovement intostatic, or immobile,materials.

This fish exists here beautifully.


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The Olympics fish sculpture marked a turning point in the history ofFrank O Gehry & Associates. For the first time, the firm used acomputer-aided design and manufacturing program in their work.The firm adopted computer aided three dimensional interactiveapplication (CATIA). Without this, some of Gehrys most exitingbuildings could not have been possible.Although Gehry designs using sketches and physical models, thecomputer can check those designs before construction. Thecomputer 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 madeof steel lattice. The fish marks the start of the Olympic Port areaand is placed at the base of two landmark towers.

One of the towers is the Hotel Arts, the work of the architects BruceGraham and Gehry himself, with 44 floors and 456 bedrooms; theother 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 inSpain

As an artwork this fish grabs the eye for its scale and as its coppercolour shining in the bright sunlight.

el pez, frank gehry, barcelona

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