Goldfish

Architect: Frank Gehry
Materials: Metal Plates
Inauguration: 1992

It’s a monumental metal sculpture. Pez Dorado is a framework of fine intertwined metallic lines that form a lattice with a markedly abstract style. In spite of this, the figure of a fish is sensed, whose scales acquire a golden color when the rays of the sun strike them.

Gehry describes his constructions as “fishes”. The skin of a fish neither articulates nor implies the shape of its internal organs. However, a fish can be beautiful, it is definitely adapted to fit in its environment, and its skin serves to keep the organism dynamically coherent. The idea of the fish, he says, is an expression of his anger against the useless historical references of postmodernism.

Gehry uses computer-aided design not to create his models, which are made by hand, but to provide precise construction specifications for their asymmetrical shapes.