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He can, Ayala speculates, "develop infrastructure at the highest level that would promote tourism." She sees him contributing, further, a "national model that others could use." In concrete terms, Ayala has at least a couple of ideas as to what all that high-falutin talk might mean. Maybe, she proposes, he'll design a "National Heritage Interpretive Center," at the mouth of the canal -- a kind of museum that explains Panama's unusually rich combination of natural and cultural history owing to its location as the "bridge" between the Americas. Or he might design structures at both entrances to the "Camino de Cruces" -- a crucial trade route running between the two oceans and across which gold and other commodities have traveled since the time of the Incas.

Gehry seems to have grander visions of what he might do in the bridge between the Americas. The possibilities he envisions are tantalizing, especially for admirers of his unpredictable style -- what the Pritzker jury lauded as his ability to make "users appreciative of both the theater and the back-stage."

"If I had a choice of things to do," says the architect, "[I'd work on] moving the locks, on a scale that would give them character." In December 1998, Gehry attended a banquet held next to the canal's Mira Flores lock. About 20 ships were run through the locks that evening. Gehry becomes animated when he describes the wonder of watching the big boats moving through the locks. The locks, he enthuses, are "a kinetic sculpture, an incredible experience." Gehry also waxes eloquent on the possibilities of a huge aquarium of the Americas.

There is more. He imagines working on a bridge crossing the locks," adding, "I wouldn't be averse to participating in some way." Like Ayala, he envisions a possible role for himself in building an elaborate visitor's center, but "maybe one that would entice people to go further, to spend a few days." He also imagines an undefined architectural project that could help "make the relation of the canal to the rain forest" clearer, or one that would help "rejuvenate" the ruined Spanish trading port of Colón.

Yet after offering each possibility, Gehry steps back, insisting that maybe he should just retreat into the shadows and let "the kids" take over -– by which he means up-and-coming Panamanian architects. Part of the difficulty, he explains, is not just that Panama is a relatively poor country, but that its mercantile culture "is not terribly interested in architecture. They have the opportunity to develop themselves, but not a history of architecture and no history of capital projects."

"Some people," Gehry continues, "think I can just come down and do what I did in Bilbao." But Spain had already built projects by world-class architects -- the Spaniard Santiago Calatrava, and the Britons Sir Norman Foster and James Stirling -- by the time he did the Guggenheim Bilbao. "I can't just go in and make a building. You need a lot of stuff. At Bilbao it was a whole community that believed and wanted it."

Still, it seems reasonable to muse that Gehry's involvement could matter. Like Roberto Eisenman, Gehry presents himself as a fighter. In Panama, he says, "we need to make architecture part of the struggle" -- a struggle "to keep land from being raped from greedy developers." But Roberto Eisenman, presumably caught up in the turmoil of advising a new and inexperienced president, hasn't returned his calls in several months.

So Gehry remains at work backstage on part of a plan for sustainable development of the canal. What does he think is likely to happen? "A million to one," he grouses, the redevelopment will be, in a word, "schlocky." What's needed, he avers, is leadership -- whether it be from Panama's new president, or from supportive verbal nudgings from someone with credibility on development issues, someone like Al Gore. And maybe, just maybe, Frank Gehry's leadership will, if nothing else, stop the schlock.
salon.com | Oct. 5, 1999

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