For Gehry, ... past figures are still vital. “This is my north star,” he says, pointing at a large photograph of the ancient bronze Charioteer of Delphi, whose beautiful drapery might be considered a refined cousin of Gehry’s buildings’ folds and crumples. “Fifty years ago I visited Delphi and saw that statue. The label said ‘artist unknown’. It made me cry, that someone could make something with inert materials that could move someone thousands of years later.” Architecture, he believes, belongs in the same company as the charioteer: “There’s historical proof it was considered as art. Somehow it got segued into not being, and being kind of run by commercial culture.”

So the Gehry universe is richly and diversely populated. It includes without much distinction long-dead artists as much as living stars, sportsmen, politicians, musicians – pretty much anyone, famous or not, who is active rather than inert, something rather than nothing. It includes the children in Kid City and the characters in the children’s animation Arthur, in which a cartoon Gehry (with little furry animal ears) helps them rebuild a treehouse. He guides them away from their wilder fantasies (it could be a giant pizza, a space-rocket-castle) towards – because that’s what they really want – something much like the treehouse they had before.

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