Perhaps because of his connections with the art world, his collaborations with Claes Oldenburg -that sculptor of great everyday objects as buildings-, or his admiration for the old master builders, Frank Gehry seems to keep alive the feeling that architecture can modify the social reality where it is produced. It is a fresh, Californian version of the old longing of the moderns: to seek the plastic patterns of the new society, something that was lost amid the postwar hardships of '45.

The Yale Psychiatric Hospital is an institutional building, difficult to locate and difficult to contain. Situated between New Haven's health facilities and a decrepit area undergoing renovation, it is a 66-bed facility for severely disturbed adolescents and young adults under the auspices of the Yale University School of Medicine. It is, therefore, a psychiatric facility for long-stay patients with complex treatment...[+]