Frank Gehry is a Canadian-American architect known for his characteristic postmodern design. His eccentric works are probably the most iconic and distinguishable examples of contemporary architecture and design.
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About his life
Frank Gehry, in full Frank Owen Gehry, original name Ephraim Owen Goldberg (born February 28, 1929, Toronto, Ontario, Canada), Canadian American architect and designer whose original, sculptural, often audacious work won him worldwide renown. Gehry’s family immigrated to Los Angeles in 1947. He studied architecture at the University of Southern California (1949–51; 1954) and city planning at Harvard University (1956–57). After working for several architectural firms, he established his own company, Frank O. Gehry & Associates, in 1962 and established its successor, Gehry Partners, in 2002.
info source: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Frank-Gehry
image source: https://www.vitra.com/en-au/corporation/designer/details/frank-gehry
What are Gehry’s style main features ?
He made a name for himself with a line of furniture called Easy Edges, and began to be commissioned to design buildings such as the Rouse Company headquarters in Columbia, Maryland, and the Santa Monica Place shopping mall.
info source: https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Frank_Gehry
Gehry’s style sometime seems unfinished or even crude, but his work is consistent with the California “funk” art movement in the 1960 and early 1970, which featured the use of inexpensive found objects and non-traditional media such as clay to make serious art.
Gehry has been called “the apostle of chain-link fencing and corrugated metal siding”. However, a retrospective exhibit at New York’s Whitney Museum in 1988 revealed that he is also a sophisticated classical artist, who knows European art history and contemporary sculpture and painting.
info source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Gehry
image source: https://www.knoll.com/knollnewsdetail/in-conversation-with-paul-goldberger
Gehry continues to be one of the world’s leading contemporary architects, and due to his celebrity status, he has been referred to as a “starchitect“—a label that Gehry rejects. In a 2009 interview with the British newspaper The Independent, he explained why he dislikes the term: “I am not a ‘star-chitect’, I am an ar-chitect,” he said. “There are people who design buildings that are not technically and financially good, and there are those who do. Two categories, simple.”
info source: https://www.biography.com/people/frank-gehry-9308278
image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Gehry
What are his major works?
- Gehry Residence (1991), Santa Monica, California.
- Binoculars Building (1991), Venice, California.
- Dancing House (1996), Prague, Czech Republic.
- Guggenheim Museum (1997) , Bilbao, Spain.
- Gehry Tower (1999), Hannover, Germany.
- Experience Music Project (2000), Seattle.
- Walt Disney Concert Hall (2003), Los Angeles.
- 8 Spruce Street (2006), New York.
- Serpentine Gallery (2008) Summer Pavilion, London.
- Neuer Zollhof (1999), Dusseldorf.
- Ray and Maria Stata Center (2004),Cambridge.
image source: https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Frank_Gehry
