Past

A Constructive Madness wherein Frank Gehry and Peter Lewis spend a fortune and a decade, end up with nothing and change the world

Special Screening Jeffrey Kipnis, Tom Ball, and Brian Neff, 2002

wex grid image fill

Written by Jeffrey Kipnis, the Wexner Center's interim chief curator of exhibitions and curator of architecture and design, A Constructive Madness captures the human drama surrounding an incredibly significant, but ultimately unrealized, architectural project.

Peter Lewis, chair of Ohio-based insurance giant The Progressive Corporation, hired architect Frank Gehry to design a house in suburban Cleveland.

Over the next nine years, the project grew in scope, ambition, and budget and became a touchstone for the architectÌs most experimental ideas. The Lewis house (and an enigmatic piece of red velvet) played a central role in transforming Gehry's style and his attitude toward the use of the computer as a creative tool in design.

Written by Jeffrey Kipnis, the Wexner Center's interim chief curator of exhibitions and curator of architecture and design, the film premiered in August at a benefit screening presented by the Aspen Filmfest. To Kipnis A Constructive Madness is "not a lecture or a lesson, but an entertaining story, a drama expressed in the medium of architecture." (61 mins.)

Presented by the Knowlton School of Architecture and the Wexner Center.

Close

Past

A Constructive Madness wherein Frank Gehry and Peter Lewis spend a fortune and a decade, end up with nothing and change the world