NO MORE GEHRYS?
Get your Frank Gehrys while you can. We took notice the other day when we saw
a story in the UK publication Building Design that quoted architecture’s Big Daddy as saying, somewhat awkwardly, I’m 76. We have tonnes [sic] of work now, so that to finish it will probably be most of it for mee [sic, sic, and sic]. Adding that Gehry currently has about five years’ worth of projects in the pipeline, the article implied that he’ll call it quits after they’re done, at which point he’ll be 81. Could the end be in sight? Who will mentor Brad Pitt? And what, we dare ask, will become of all those underlings when there are no more crumpled bits of tinfoil to transform into masterpieces? That comment [in Building Design] was out of context,, a Gehry rep curtly insisted. It isn’t accurate.. We’re aware thattunlike ussthe British press has a tendency to make something out of nothing. Nevertheless, expect every would-be Medici and deep-pocketed arriviste to start scrambling for a piece of whatever action might be left.

WAH-WAH WANDERS
The cocky Dutch designer Marcel Wanders isn’t feeling so smug about THOR, his new restaurant at The Hotel on Rivington. At a recent New York cocktail party for Netherlands Architecture Institute director Aaron Betsky, Wanders was whining to anyone who would listennand we do mean anyoneeabout how he’s unhappy with how his design for the interior turned out. He blamed the client, who he called an asshole..

JOHN DOE, AIA
As if the rhetoric of Rem Koolhaas wasn’t bad enough, you can now add identity theft to the occupational hazards of the architecture profession. We’ve learned that, last month, an employee of the New York City Department of Education’s construction unit was arrested for unlawfully posing as a licensed architect. In an apparent moonlighting scheme, one James Arriaga allegedly used the bogus stamp and seal of an unnamed, bona fide architect on building plans, permit applications, and other documents for more than 150 duped clients. The lesson is that you should watch your seal,, a Department of Buildings rep told us. Also, periodically check applications filed under your name in the city’s Building Information System, and be mindful that if you hire somebody, they clearly have access to your license number and so on.. Um, aren’t there better ways to illicitly make money?

THE WOBBLY WIFE
We have some good news to share with a particularly prominent architect in our community: Your wife was not recently mugged, as you thought. Now, the bad news: She’s a lush. And so, we ask our readers: Which architecture couple, no doubt wanting to cozy up with a certain constituency, recently had dinner with a group that included one of its key members before the wife got so drunk that she busted her nose? We hear the husband left early, but she stayed on for a nightcap or three and got so trashed that her companions had to practically carry her home. Once there, she fell on a stone floor and got a bloody noseeclaiming she’d been mugged instead. Don’t worry, dear, he would drive us to drink, too.

LET SLIP:achen@archpaper.com