Building Case Study-The Nationale-Nederlanden Building(Dancing House)

Dancing House Model

Photo

Frank O. GehrySketches

Dancing House oil painting

structure

The site of Gehry's Dancing House was originally occupied by a house in the Neo-renaissance style from the end of the 19th century. That house was destroyed during bombing in 1945, its remains finally removed in 1960. The neighboring house was co-owned by Czech ex-president Vaclav Havel, who lived there from his childhood until the mid-1990s. He asked Frank Gehry to build a house there and Gehry, funded by the Dutch bank ING, accepted the challenge. Gehry had an almost unlimited budget, because ING wanted to create an icon in Prague. The construction started in 1994 and the house was finished in 1996.This building was very controversial at its inception. Not only did it standout stylistically, but it was asymmetrical and to many, it was glaringly out of character to its more traditional setting. The building is an example of deconstructivist architecture, with an unusual shape. It reflects a woman and man dancing together. Construction is from 99 concrete panels each of different shape and dimension, each therefore requiring a unique wooden form. The design tools and techniques used on this building were the test runs for the processes used on all of Gehry's future projects including the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao as well as others. The use of curves on the building mimics the aerodynamic shape of airplanes and sports cars; the software that his firm has refined was previously used to design French jet aircraft. The materials used here are malleable and unexpected materials that often shimmer, reflect and even sparkle such as corrugated as well as stainless steel, polished aluminium, chain link fencing and wood along with various transparencies and tints of glass.
References:
http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/dancinghouse/index.htm
http://www.berkshirefinearts.com/?page=article&article_id=1095&catID=26
http://www.e-architekt.cz/workshop04

http://antiquesandthearts.com/Archives/2008/11-November/images//2008-11-25__14-49-53Image2.GIF
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Prague_-_Dancing_House.jpg
http://www.iurro.com/
http://www.arcspace.com/studio/gehry/07.html
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PG07ME957.jpg
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Frank Owen Gehry loves to break traditional architectural orders and bring revolutionary elements to the design. His grandfather used to work in a hardware store, so Frank was familiar with those metallic products when he was a child. I guess that was the reason why he was so fond of using iron and steel in his architectural design pieces.

Among all his charming designs, my favourite piece is the Dancing House. The soft lines give a special interpretation of modern romance, which significantly differs from the traditional style European city.The Dancing House has new Gothic styled buildings surrounding, and this creates a great visual impact.

The Dancing House was awarded as the best designed architecture by the famous TIME magazine in 1996. The original name of the Dancing House was "Ginger and Fred" named after two well-known couple dancers called Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Hollywood. Then why is it then called the Dancing House? The reason is simply because the Dancing House looks like a dancing couple.