Frank Gehry Is Designing Facebook's New Office Building and That's Sad

Frank Gehry, the genius architect who designed the Walt Disney Concert Hall or the curve perverted one-trick pony who litters beautiful cities with Toontown buildings because he can't draw a straight line anymore (depending on your perspective), is going to be designing Facebook's new engineering office building. You don't even need to know architecture to know Gehry, he's an icon. This is a good thing because it proves Facebook has taste. But a horrible thing because its taste is so generically terrible.

Look, having Gehry design your building isn't the worst thing in the world. He's done some great work, he's one of the most famous architects ever and people really "like" his stuff. Screw the vanilla boxes! Let's live in a world on mushrooms. But just because someone with a big name decides to design deranged buildings inspired by the aftermath of a Michael Bay movie, it doesn't mean you have to like them. Or that they're any good:

Frank Gehry Is Designing Facebook's New Office Building and That's Sad

Saying Gehry designs "awesome" buildings is easy. His designs are so different (from the norm, not each other) that they force you to comment. But the young and scrappy Facebook—the one who gave David Choe FB stock for tagging up its walls—probably wouldn't have done this (they couldn't have afforded it, first of all) because it's just so damn typical of a big public company trying to fake cool. Asking Gehry to design their latest building is the classic no-taste-masked-as-taste move. A bunch of engineers thinking they're cool for working inside a Gehry building is a joke that writes itself.

Luckily, the building doesn't suck. At least not yet. Here's what the building looks like:

Frank Gehry Is Designing Facebook's New Office Building and That's Sad

In the middle of Menlo Park, where Gehry doesn't exactly have to tango with historic buildings and mind a cityscape, it doesn't look half bad. It looks carefully restrained and not like steel and glass vomit. Trees on the roof! So green! Here's what Facebook has to say:


Not sure you needed Gehry for that. [Facebook via TechCrunch]