Beleaguered Gehry in good company

Frank Gehry (left) is not the first great architect to have his genius questioned over such prosaic issues as leaking roofs and cracking masonry (see Charles Laurence's report for The First Post today). Like others before him, he has relied on his engineers to solve the practical problems of his grand designs. Famously, Frank Lloyd Wright's spiral conch-shell-inspired Guggenheim Museum in New York presented practical nightmares for its occupants.

Not least among the problems were leaky airplane-sized bathrooms - an embarrassment for a museum attracting thousands of visitors a day - and the fact that no standard office furniture would fit properly within the curved walls. Most controversially of all, it was next to impossible to hang paintings along the downhill spiral ramp without causing artists to throw hissy fits, complaining that people would speed past their masterpieces and wind up in a heap in the atrium. But no-one ever questioned the god-like Frank Lloyd Wright.

Some great architects do at least take an interest in practicalities. IM Pei, while working in the 1970s on his masterwork, the National Gallery of Art's East Building in Washington DC, wanted to know how his pink marble facade would be kept clean.

A gung-ho technician was so keen to prove how gentle was the cleaning solution he had found for the job that, in front of the startled architect, he lifted the bottle and swallowed it. He died two days later. ·