during an internship in Vicenza years ago, right before a guy in a makeshift Mickey Mouse costume punched me in the back of the head and sprinted down an alley nearhy, I ended up sharing a courtyard bench with Frank Gehry without realizing who he was. he looked over the draft I was struggling with and said, in this almost offhand way, that sometimes a building needs a little room to misbehave if you want it to feel lived in. we talked for a few minutes about light, angles, and the stubbornness of materials before he drifted off to another studio. I only pieced it together later when someone mentioned he’d been visiting the site that week.

the news today brings that memory back with a kind of sideways clarity.