Frank O Gehry A Modern Architectural ICON
Frank Owen Gehry, is a Pritzker Prize winning architect based in Los Angeles. Gehry is considered a modern architectural icon and celebrity, a major “Starchitect”—a neologism describing the phenomenon of architects attaining a sort of celebrity status.
Having grown up in Canada, Gehry is a huge fan of hockey. He began a hockey league in his office, though he no longer plays with them. In 2004, he designed the trophy for the World Cup of Hockey.
Personal Life
Gehry was born into a Jewish family in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1929 and moved with his family to Los Angeles in 1947. He holds dual citizenship both in the United States and Canada.Mr. Gehry received his Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Southern California in 1954, and studied City Planning at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. In subsequent years, Mr. Gehry has built an architectural career that has spanned four decades and produced public and private buildings in America, Europe, and Asia.
Professional Experience
Frank Gehry is Design Principal for the firm of Frank O. Gehry and Associates, Inc., which he established in 1962. Before founding the firm, Mr. Gehry worked with architects Victor Gruen and Pereira & Luckman in Los Angeles, and with André Remondet in Paris.Over the years, Gehry has moved away from a conventional commercial practice to a artistically directed atelier. His deconstructed architectural style began to emerge in the late 1970s when Gehry, directed by a personal vision of architecture, created collage-like compositions out of found materials. Instead of creating buildings, Gehry creates ad-hoc pieces of functional sculpture.
Gehry’s architecture has undergone a marked evolution from the plywood and corrugated-metal vernacular of his early works to the distorted but pristine concrete of his later works. However, the works retain a deconstructed aesthetic that fits well with the increasingly disjointed culture to which they belong.
In 2002, Gehry Partnership, Gehry Partners, LLP, was formed and currently supports a staff of over 175 people. Gehry Partners, LLP is a full service firm with broad international experience in academic, commercial, museum, performance, and residential projects. Gehry Partners employs a large number of senior architects who have extensive experience in the technical development of building systems and construction documents, and who are highly qualified in the management of complex projects.
Every project undertaken by Gehry Partners is designed personally and directly by Frank Gehry. All of the resources of the firm and the extensive experience of the firm’s partners are available to assist in the design effort and to carry this effort forward through technical development and construction administration. The firm relies on the use of Digital Project, a sophisticated 3D computer modeling program originally created for use by the aerospace industry, to thoroughly document designs and to rationalize the bidding, fabrication, and construction processes.
Works
Some of the architectural marvels of Mr. Gehry include the titanium-covered Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles, Experience Music project in Seattle, Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis, Dancing House in Prague, Czech Republic, and his private residence in Santa Monica, California, from where his career takes a high jump, lifting it from the status of “paper architecture.”Walt Disney Concert Hall
The Walt Disney Concert Hall at 111 South Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, California is the fourth hall of the Los Angeles Music Center. Designed as the most acoustically sophisticated concert halls in the world, providing both visual and aural intimacy for an unparalleled musical experience, it is recognized as an internationally architectural landmark.
The hall opens in 2003 and seats 2,265 people and serves as the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and the Los Angeles Master Chorale.
From the stainless steel curves of its striking exterior to the state-of-the-art acoustics of the hardwood-paneled main auditorium, the 3.6-acre complex embodies the unique energy and creative spirit of the city of Los Angeles and its orchestra.
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
The new Guggenheim Museum Bilbao by Frank Gehry was probably the most often mentioned new building of 1998 and 1999 in architecture circles. It is a modern and contemporary art museum, being built alongside the Nervion River, which runs through the city of Bilbao to the Atlantic Coast.World-famous architect Philip Johnson called the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao “the greatest building of our time.” It is “a miracle,” said The New York Times. Certainly, few buildings in history have generated so much praise or have so greatly changed a city as Frank Gehry’s museum on the industrial riverfront of Bilbao.
The museum’s design and construction serve as an object lesson in Gehry’s style and method. Like much of Gehry’s other works, the structure consists of radically sculpted, organic contours. Sited as it is in a port town, it is intended to resemble a ship. Its brilliantly reflective titanium panels resemble fish scales, echoing the other organic life (and, in particular, fish-like) forms that recur commonly in Gehry’s designs, as well as the river Nervión upon which the museum sits.
Visitors remain unmoved upon entering the museum’s 150-foot-high atrium, from which glass elevators and metal walkways lead to 19 exhibition spaces—including the world’s largest gallery, measuring 426 feet long and 98 feet wide. The ground-floor galleries suit large-scale artworks and installations, and some pieces were specifically made to fit their exhibit spaces, among them Richard Serra’s Serpent.
Dancing House
‘Dancing House’ in Prague, designed by Frank Gehry is located about 800m along the river Vltava, south of the Charles Bridge, and next to Jiraskuv Most. The building houses offices and apartments. The site of Gehry’s Dancing House was originally occupied by a house in the Neo-renaissance style from the end of the 19th century. That house was destroyed during bombing in 1945, its remains finally removed in 1960. The building is an example of deconstructivist architecture, with an unusual shape.
Built between 1992-1996, the Dancing Building is crazy looking, and appears somewhat out of place amongst the usual Prague architecture. The building is nick-named Fred and Ginger (Ginger Rogers and Fred Astair), as it looks like two people, a man and a women dancing. Construction is from 99 concrete panels each of different shape and dimension, each therefore requiring a unique wooden form.
Awards
Gehry’s architecture has received worldwide recognition and scores of awards. In an article published in the New York Times in November, 1989, noted architecture critic Paul Goldberger wrote that Mr. Gehry’s “buildings are powerful essays in primal geometric form and... materials, and from an aesthetic standpoint they are among the most profound and brilliant works of architecture of our time.”
In 1994, he became the first recipient of the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Award for lifetime contribution to the arts. In 1998, Mr. Gehry was awarded with the National Medal of Arts, and became the first recipient of the Friedrich Kiesler Prize. In 1999, Mr. Gehry received the Lotos Medal of Merit from the Lotos Club, and the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects. In 2000, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from Americans for the Arts.
