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Frank Owen Gehry, CC (born Ephraim Owen Goldberg in Toronto, Ontario on February 28, 1929) is a Canadian-American architect.
Gehry is best known for his sculptural approach to building design and for constructing curvaceous structures, often covered with reflective metal.
His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions. Many museums, companies, and cities seek Gehry's services as a badge of distinction, regardless of the product he delivers.
His best known work is the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, which is covered in titanium.
Personal life
Gehry was born into a Jewish family in Toronto. He was a creative child, encouraged by his grandmother, with whom he would build "little cities" out of scraps of wood.
In 1947, at age 17, his family changed their name from Goldberg to Gehry and moved to California. Gehry got a job driving a delivery truck, and studied at Los Angeles City College before graduating from the University of Southern California's School of Architecture.
After graduation from USC in 1954, he spent time away from the field of architecture in numerous other jobs, including service in the U.S. Army. He studied city planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design for a year, leaving before completing the program.
Gehry is a private person, and there are few details about his private life. In the 2005 American Masters episode Sketches of Frank Gehry on PBS, he discusses his first wife, with whom he shared two daughters, and the dissolution of that marriage. Gehry remarried, and his second wife is mentioned briefly in the episode.
Gehry is now a naturalized American citizen and lives in Los Angeles.
Architectural style
Gehry's style is derived from late modernism. The tortured, warped forms of his structures are considered expressions of the deconstructivist (DeCon) school of modernist architecture. The DeCon movement departs from modernism in its de-emphasis of societal goals and functional necessity. Unlike early modernist structures, DeCon structures are not required to reflect specific social ideas (such as speed or universality of form), and they do not reflect a belief that form follows function. DeCon, which Gehry has continued to refine, is also known as the Santa Monica school of architecture. This region of the United States has produced the greatest range of experimentation in the field of DeCon design and contains the largest concentration of the structures.
Some have also pointed to Le Corbusier's abstractly-sculptured Notre Dame du Haut as a precursor to Frank Gehry's style, as well as a possible source of his ideas. However, in Sketches of Frank Gehry, Gehry indicates that the work of the great Finnish architect and designer Alvar Aalto was his greatest inspiration.
Accomplishments
Gehry spent many years working in traditional architecture; he worked for the firms Pereira and Luckman, Victor Gruen Associates, and Andre Remondet. In 1967, he created his own firm, Frank O. Gehry and Associates.
According to the Gehry documentary, his work was primarily expressed in traditional architecture for many years. He experienced financial difficulties during much of his firm's early days. He expressed creativity in his own home, which he used as a creative launch pad, playing with shapes and textures. Gehry had an epiphany when a guest at his house asked why he was so creative with his home, but so reserved and traditional in the execution of his work. Gehry decided to take his work in a new direction.
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao work is perceived to be Gehry's most iconic and representative work, and was a culmination of Gehry's new directions and experimentation with surfaces and shapes.
With the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Gehry gained a reputation for building on time and budget in a business where delays and cost overruns are common. In an interview in Harvard Design Magazine, Gehry explained the three things he does to keep his projects on time and budget. First, he ensures that what he calls the "organization of the artist" will prevail during construction, in order to prevent political and business interests from interfering with design and thus to arrive at a result that is as close as possible to the original design drawings. Second, he makes sure he has a detailed and realistic cost estimate before proceeding with a building. Third, he uses his 3D tools and close collaboration with the individual building trades to control costs during construction.
Besides leaving a legacy of built work, Gehry created a new technology firm (Gehry Technologies) with the mission of disseminating the 3D CAD tools and processes to other architects and members of the construction industry.
Frank Gehry also designed a wrist watch, marketed by Fossil. Instead of it reading like a standard watch, if the time was 1:54 p.m., it would read 6 'til 2, or at 12:30 a.m. it would read half-past midnight. He has also designed products for Tiffany & Co.
Gehry has, in recent works, made an attempt to move away from titanium surfaces, and admirers and critics alike are waiting to see whether Gehry is able to produce equally compelling forms in a different idiom. Gehry is working with different textures and lighting, incorporating these into the framework of his usual approach. Gehry is implementing these ideas into new projects, including a small office complex on the West Side of Manhattan.
Criticism
Gehry's work has detractors and critics. Among the criticism:
- That the buildings are often impractical
- That the spectacle of a building often overwhelms its intended use (especially in the case of museums and arenas)
- The building does not seem to "organically" belong in its surroundings
Seattle's EMP Music Museum represents this phenomenon at its most extreme. Microsoft's Paul Allen chose Gehry as the architect of the urban structure to house his public collection of music history artifacts. While the result was undeniably unique, critical reaction came in the form of withering attacks. The bizarre color choices, the total disregard for architectural harmony with the built and natural surroundings, and the mammoth scale led to accusations that Gehry had simply "got it wrong". Admirers of the building remind critics that similar attacks were levelled against the Eiffel Tower in the late 19th century, and that only historical perspective would allow a fair evaluation of the building's merits.
Gehry's works have also raised concerns about possible environmental hazards. According to the Los Angeles Times, The Disney Center in downtown Los Angeles has "roasted the sidewalk to 140 degrees Fahrenheit, enough to melt plastic and cause serious sunburn to people standing on the street".
According to CNN, Case Western Reserve University "takes precautions with Gehry's sloping roof":
- CLEVELAND, Ohio (AP)â??The shiny, swirling $62 million building that houses the business school at Case Western Reserve University is a marvel to behold. But it is sometimes best admired from afar.
- In its first winter, snow and ice have been sliding off the long, sloping, stainless-steel roof, bombarding the sidewalk below. And in bright sun, the glint off the steel tiles is so powerful that standing next to the building is like lying on a beach with a tanning mirror.
Recent criticism of Gehry suggests he is repeating himself. Critics claim the use of disjointed metal panoply (often titanium) that has become Gehry's trademark is perhaps overused. Almost all of his recent work seems derivative of his landmark Bilbao Guggenheim. (It should be noted, however, that while the Guggenheim was completed before Disney Hall, the latter was designed first.) A slightly more charitable opinion is that Gehry would find it difficult not to rehash Bilbao or Disney even if he wanted to because his "signature style" is so widely recognized that his potential clients approach him expecting it.
Academically, one of Gehry's most consistent critics is Hal Foster, an art critic who has taught art and art history at Princeton University and Cornell University.
Foster feels that much of Gehry's acclaim has been as the result of attention and spectacle surrounding the buildings, rather than from an objective view. [1]
Other notable aspects of career
Academia
Gehry is a Distinguished Professor of Architecture at Columbia University in New York City and has also taught at Yale University.
Celebrity status
Gehry is considered a modern architectural icon and celebrity. He came to the attention of the public in 1972 with his "Easy Edges" cardboard furniture. He has appeared in Apple's black and white "Think Different" pictorial ad campaign that associates offbeat but revered figures with Apple's design philosophy. He even once appeared as himself in an episode of "The Simpsons" in the episode The Seven-Beer Snitch. He also voiced himself on the TV show "Arthur", where he helped Arthur and his friends design a new treehouse.
Documentary
In 2005, veteran film director Sydney Pollack, a friend of Gehry's, made the documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry. It was released on DVD by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment on August 22, 2006 together with an interview with Sydney Pollack.
Works
Completed
- Easy Edges furniture series 1972.
- Exhibit Center, Merriweather Post Pavilion, and Rouse Company Headquarters, Columbia, Maryland, USA (1974)
- Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, California, USA (various buildings, 1978-2002) [2]
- Santa Monica Place, Santa Monica, California, USA (1980)
- California Aerospace Museum, Los Angeles, California, USA (1982-1984)
- Edgemar Retail Complex, Santa Monica, California, USA (1984)
- Chiat/Day Building, Venice, California, USA (1985-1991)
- Vitra Design Museum, Vitra premises, Weil am Rhein, Germany (1989)
- Frederick Weisman Museum of Art, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA (1990) [3]
- Iowa Advanced Technology Laboratories, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA (1987-1992) [4]
- Disney Village, Disneyland Resort Paris, Paris, France (1992)
- Center for the Visual Arts, University of Toledo, Toledo, Ohio, USA (1993) [5]
- American Center, Paris, France (1994) [6] (currently Cinémathèque Française)
- Dancing House ("Fred and Ginger"), Prague, Czech Republic (1995) Photo 1, Photo 2, Photo 3
- Anaheim ICE (formerly Disney ICE), Anaheim, California (1995)
- Team Disney Anaheim, Anaheim, California (1995) [7]
- Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Bilbao, Spain (1997)
- Der Neue Zollhof, Düsseldorf, Germany (1999) [8]
- Vontz Center for Molecular Studies, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA (1999) [9]
- DG Bank building, Pariser Platz 3, Berlin, Germany (2000)
- Experience Music Project, Seattle, Washington, USA (2000)
- Gehry Tower, Hanover, Germany (2001)
- Issey Miyake, Flagship Store, New York, New York, USA (2001)
- Peter B. Lewis Building, Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA (2002) [10] [11]
- Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, USA (2003) [12] [13]
- Maggie's centre, Ninewells Hospital, Dundee, Scotland (2003) [14]
- Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, California, USA (2003)
- Ray and Maria Stata Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA (2004) [15]
- Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park, Chicago, Illinois, USA (2004) [16]
- MARTa, Herford, Germany (2005)
- IAC/InterActiveCorp West Coast Headquarters, Sunset Strip, West Hollywood, California, USA (2005)
- Brian Transeau's house, Los Angeles, California, USA
- Marqués de Riscal Winery, Elciego (Rioja (wine) region), Spain (2006).
In progress
- Grand Avenue Project, Los Angeles, California
- Art Gallery of Ontario renovation, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (2004)
- Museum of Tolerance, Jerusalem, Israel (expected completion in 2008) [17]
- Science library, Princeton University [18]
- Ohr-O'Keefe Museum, Biloxi, Mississippi, USA (open 2005; all buildings expected to be complete by 2007) [19]
- Panama: Bridge of Life Museum of Biodiversity, Panama City, Panama
- Inter-Active Corp. Headquarters, New York City
[20]
- Guggenheim Abu Dhabi (GAD), Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (expected completion in 2011).
- Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia Pennslyvania (Announced October 19th 2006)
In popular culture
- He appeared in the 16th season of The Simpsons, in the episode "The Seven-Beer Snitch".
- He voiced himself in an episode of Arthur, in the episode "Castles in the Sky".
Awards
- Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize in Architecture, American Academy of Arts and Letters (1977)
- Pritzker Architecture Prize (1989)
- Wolf Prize in Art (Architecture), Wolf Foundation (1992)
- Praemium Imperiale Award for Architecture, Japan Art Association (1992)
- Dorothy and Lillian Gish Award (1994)
- National Medal of Arts (1998)
- Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts (1998)
- Gold Medal, American Institute of Architects (AIA) (1999)
- Gold Medal, Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) (2000)
- Gold Medal for Architecture, American Academy of Arts and Letters (2002)
- Companion of the Order of Canada (2002)
- Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service (2004)
Honorary doctorates
- Of Visual Arts; California Institute of the Arts (1987)
- Of Fine Arts; Rhode Island School of Design (1987)
- Of Engineering; Technical University of Nova Scotia (1989)
- Of Fine Arts; Otis Arts Institute (1989)
- Of Humanities; Occidental College (1993)
- Whittier College (1995)
- Of Architecture; Southern California Insitute of Architecture (1997)
- Of Laws; University of Toronto (1998)
- University of Edinburgh (2000)
- University of Southern California (2000)
- Yale University (2000)
- Harvard University (2000)
- The School of The Art Institute of Chicago (2004)
Additional images
The following are additional images of Gehry's works.
Image:Weisman Art Museum.jpg|Weisman Art Museum
Image:Prague - Dancing House.jpg|Dancing House
Image:Guggenheim-bilbao-jan05.jpg|Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Image:2005 08 18 17 09 22.JPG|DG Bank building atrium
Image:ExperienceMusicProject.jpg|Experience Music Project
Image:Fisher at Bard College.jpg|Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts
Image:Lightmatter disneyhall5.jpg|Walt Disney Concert Hall
Image:Wfm stata center.jpg|Stata Center
Image:Stata.jpg|Stata Center
Image:PBLewis1.JPG|Peter B. Lewis Building, home of the Weatherhead School of Management
Image:PBLlobby.JPG|Interior View of the Peter B. Lewis Building
Image:Fish dance01 2816.jpg|Fish Dance in Kobe
References
See also
External links
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