Here’s a story from the BBC.com from 2003 about Gehry’s Hove project. It is being fought by conservatives who say that the land should not be built on.  A story today in The Guardian said that the battle is on-going.  The tall buildings look a lot like the Brooklyn bride. They look quite nice on the water like that.

World-famous architect Frank Gehry, who has created eye-catching landmarks in Bilbao, Seattle and Las Vegas, has set his sights on Sussex.

This is what tourists would see from the end of the Palace Pier

He may have designed the iconoclastic Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the equally daring Experience Music Project in Seattle, but his English debut is by no means certain.

Gehry’s vision of a new development for the seafront at genteel Hove will first have to overcome a rival bid and then the opposition of the local Conservative group, which is against any housing on the site.

About 400 local residents have also signed a petition.

Brighton and Hove Council is expected to make a decision next month on which is its preferred option, but the proposal will still need to go through the normal planning application process.

The council came up with the idea of a competition when they decided it was high time they redeveloped the 70-year-old King Alfred Leisure Centre in Hove.

The idea was for the council to donate the land and a private developer would stump up the money and subsidise the development by building abound 400 flats with unrivalled sea views.

Most of the flats would be for the luxury end of the market but 40% would be earmarked for key workers like nurses and teachers, or people on the housing waiting list.

Several of the world’s top architects submitted bids for the project and the shortlist was whittled down to two, with Lord Rogers (formerly Richard Rogers) the latest to be rejected.

Now it is a straight fight.

In the red corner is Gehry’s bizarre vision – a collection of four tower blocks of varying height clustered around a swimming pool complex and "winter garden".

Each tower has giant glass panels, like wings, and each looks as if it has been melted with a giant blowtorch.

In the blue corner is the design put forward by Wilkinson Eyre, who are best known for their remarkable Millennium Bridge in Gateshead.

Their Hove proposal is far more low-key but no less bold – four interconnected buildings resting on the beach almost like jagged bits of glass.

–BBC.com (2003)