Frank Gehry

Emeco and Gregg Buchbinder's collaboration with Frank Gehry told by Jaye Buchbinder

My dad first met Frank Gehry in his fairly early days of Emeco – after the first Philippe Starck collaboration in the early 200s. Frank and his team ordered 125 Hudson Swivel Chairs for their office in Playa Del Rey, close enough to warrant a visit to check on the chairs. In the process, my dad met Frank. In awe (of course) that Frank knew little Emeco, my dad asked why he had chosen the Hudson Chairs. Frank said "Hot glue guns and exacto knives" – no other explanation. (As a side note one of my best friends later worked at the Gehry office as a model maker and sat in a Hudson chair. She stabbed herself in the leg with an exacto knife. She's okay.)

As it turns out, Frank had been using the 1006 Navy Chairs forever. He did a building and interior for NY Bagels and used all vintage 1006 Navy Chairs, that was 1982. There are so many parallels to the exposed metal and structure and the Navy Chair, it makes sense.

Frank showed my dad an all-aluminum cast chair and asked his thoughts on it. My dad picked it up, sat down, and said "it's heavy and the connections are going to be problematic."

Frank thought for a second and said, "Let's do a chair." My dad says that was around 2002 – the first of many meetings for what would later become Superlight in 2004.

The first of many meetings also where Frank and my dad Gregg would bond over sailing and later sailed together – cruising out of Marina Del Rey with a few other friends. While sailing up the coast, Frank would point out the buildings he had done – namely the Norton House, a lifeguard stand inspired residence close to the pier in Venice. My personal favorite project of his.

The intent with Superlight was to do something that nobody had ever done – to have a chair flex for comfort like an airplane wing. For the chair to flex with your body. He was inspired by the classic Gio Ponti, Superleggera – an incredibly light Italian design. A competitive guy, he wanted to do something even lighter.

Frank started to sketch. It's hard to describe a Frank Gehry sketch, and Gregg had some problems understanding what it was supposed to communicate. The team helped him understand the sketch WAS the design – a scribble to communicate movement.

At the Emeco factory, I've seen a million iterations of this chair – a square tube frame, a woven aluminum, a flat bar bent. Not that many are fully completed – it seemed to become clear this was going to be hard to execute.

My dad says at this point Frank had the idea that it could be a structure and a skin that could be taken apart for the ease of storing. The two parts could snap on and off like a TV dinner. This constraint focused the team in on round tubing to let the skin articulate around the frame.

Challenges came in the form of joints, connecting the joints, and connections that were permanent when needed but allowed for the snapping together. Emeco tried glue to connect tubes, an inner tube that acted as a dowel, and quickly realized the glue didn't hold. The design also initially started with uncrossed legs, but there was so much racking side to side movement (a chair-maker's nightmare) that they had to cross the frames. The skin and frame also needed to become connected for a contract setting – it was going to be too hard to make sure a user had connected them properly.

Two years later (not bad for Emeco standards) and the Superlight launched unofficially in Gehry's Playa Del Rey office alongside the launch of his Vodka company. My older brother, Kurt (12 at the time) glued the frames together. I bartended (I was 11). The drink on order was the special – my dad said, "do two shots of vodka, half a cup of juice, ice, fill the rest with sparkling water and put an umbrella in it." Two people at the party won original Superlight chairs in a drawing.

The chair officially launched in Milan in 2004 at Salone. The old Salone, the first location much closer to the city. The stand was 10'x20' – enough room for a few chairs.

There were a few other events, including the AIA building in New York – a chair, a presentation and Frank's Vodka. (I did not bartend this one.)

Then some cool projects: Ed Ruscha had a conference room he was doing for Noah Purefoy for his place out in Joshua tree. Ed was the chairman and wanted the Superlight.

The entire process created a friendship between my dad and Frank. I think there was a kindred spirit of two guys who really enjoyed what they did – building things and pushing the boundaries of how we all thought about design. Frank was always around to meet with my dad – even though he had probably 35 other major, international building projects to work on. My dad said he felt a little guilty pulling him away from his important work, but Frank was always easy to get along with, very hands on, and seemed delighted by the process. My dad said, "Our process seems slow to us, but compared to architecture… it's pretty fast!"

A few years later, Frank asked about doing something to raise money for the Hereditary Disease Foundation, a nonprofit important to him that he sat on the board for. An aluminum, one-off piece to be auctioned. Sounded cool. I got recruited to this project as a lucky 16-year-old.

Every Saturday we would go to his office in the morning, stopping by the (then new) El Segundo Whole Foods to bring in matzo ball soup. The office was incredible to me – light and airy but jam packed with beautiful cardboard and foam core models of the hundreds of projects around the globe they had worked on. The miniature trees from balled up craft paper scattered around museums, twisting apartment buildings, and opera houses. The people working there all seemed so cool and smart, aspirational to a 16-year-old plotting a life path.

The design started off very different – loopy. We made a full-scale piece (if you look at photos of the bench, you will realize full scale is very big). Frank brought out a book and said, "we can't do this!" showing us a product that looked similar, but smaller in scale. Frank said, "People will think I copied this." He had also told us, "There's no new ideas."

The design pivoted to a second idea with a more angular based and a flowing seat. We used big plywood molds to do the bends – bending one section at a time. We brought the next version (now at Emeco House) in to Frank and he said, "why is the aluminum in sections". We reported that it was just what the model shows. Turns out his son, Sam, also working with us, had built the small model with limited material, in sections. We learned and made the next one in one piece and polished it.

The lounge was way bigger than anything we had done before – we couldn't use the same heating process and alloy (needed zero temper to be able to do the big bends). We asked the aerospace companies scattered around the area and found one willing to let us use their oven. 

Frank did a signature for it – we made it a pattern and laser cut it on to the underside. 

We did a photoshoot at a studio in Compton, where they had a pristine white backdrop. We used white gloves and foot covers to lower the polished bench on the set, and the photographer cautiously used boards to get the reflection perfect. It was amazing to see that eye to detail and the intuition of what would show in the reflective surface.

The lounge just coincidentally went back to auction at Sotheby's and raised $154,000 for HDF, 15 years after launch.

My favorite part of talking to my dad about this is hearing about the range of what Frank worked on. He would text (via Blackberry) projects to my dad – Oldenberg sculptures for Disney to fix, a telephone booth in Paris, a sailboat. Crazy projects that would be great for someone with a lot of free time. My dad said, "I was so flattered that he would think of me and send me these really challenging problems. Especially someone like that who is so good at solving problems and knows the best people to do it."

RIP Frank

- Jaye Buchbinder, 2026

Photos by Emeco