page_title: Frank Gehry
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Frank Gehry / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Looking west from walkway of Brooklyn Bridge at Beekman Tower on a sunny midday.
context_page_description: Frank Owen Gehry, CC, FAIA is a Canadian-born American architect, residing in Los Angeles.
  A number of his buildings, including his private residence, have become world-renowned attractions. His works are cited as being among the most important works of contemporary architecture in the 2010 World Architecture Survey, which led Vanity Fair to label him as "the most important architect of our age".
  Gehry's best-known works include the titanium-clad Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles; Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, France; MIT Ray and Maria Stata Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Vontz Center for Molecular Studies on the University of Cincinnati campus; Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle; New World Center in Miami Beach; Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis; Dancing House in Prague; the Vitra Design Museum and the MARTa Herford museum in Germany; the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto; the Cinémathèque Française in Paris; and 8 Spruce Street in New York City.
  His private residence in Santa Monica, California, jump-started his career. Gehry is also the designer of the future National Dwight D.
context_section_description: Gehry returned to Los Angeles to work for Victor Gruen Associates, to whom he had been apprenticed while at the USC School of Architecture. In 1957 he was given the chance to design his first private residence at the age of 28, with friend and old classmate Greg Walsh. Construction was done by another neighbor across the street from his wife's family, Charlie Sockler. Built in Idyllwild, California, for his wife Anita's family neighbor Melvin David, "The David Cabin", shows features that were to become synonymous with later work. The over 2,000 sq ft (190 m²) mountain retreat has unique design features with strong Asian influences, stemming from his earliest inspirations at the time like Shosoin Treasure House in Nara, Japan, among others. Beams protrude from the exterior sides, vertical grain douglas fir detail, and exposed, unfinished ceiling beams are prominent features.
  In 1961, he moved to Paris, where he worked for architect Andre Remondet. In 1962, Gehry established a practice in Los Angeles, which became Frank Gehry and Associates in 1967 and then Gehry Partners in 2001. Gehry's earliest commissions were all in Southern California, where he designed a number of innovative commercial structures such as Santa Monica Place (1980) and residential buildings such as the eccentric Norton House (1984) in Venice, California.
  Among these works, however, Gehry's most notable design may be the renovation of his own Santa Monica residence. Originally built in 1920 and purchased by Gehry in 1977, the house features a metallic exterior wrapped around the original building that leaves many of the original details visible. Gehry still resides there.
  Other completed buildings designed by Gehry during the 1980s include the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium (1981) in San Pedro and the California Aerospace Museum (1984) at the California Museum of Science and Industry in Los Angeles.
  In 1989, Gehry was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize. The jury cited Gehry as "Always open to experimentation, he has as well a sureness and maturity that resists, in the same way that Picasso did, being bound either by critical acceptance or his successes. His buildings are juxtaposed collages of spaces and materials that make users appreciative of both the theatre and the back-stage, simultaneously revealed."
  Though Gehry continued to design other notable buildings in California such as the Chiat/Day Building (1991) in Venice in collaboration with Claes Oldenburg, which is well known for its massive sculpture of binoculars, he also began to receive larger national and international commissions. These include Gehry's first European commission, the Vitra International Furniture Manufacturing Facility and Design Museum in Germany completed in 1989. This was soon followed by other major commissions including the Frederick Weisman Museum of Art (1993) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Cinémathèque Française (1994) in Paris, and the Dancing House (1996) in Prague.
  In 1997, Gehry vaulted to a new level of international acclaim when the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao opened in Bilbao, Spain. Hailed by The New Yorker as a "masterpiece of the 20th century" and legendary architect Philip Johnson as "the greatest building of our time", the museum became famous for its striking, yet aesthetically pleasing design and the economic effect that it had on the city.
  Since then, Gehry has regularly won major commissions and has further established himself as one of the world's most notable architects. His best-received works include several concert halls for classical music, such as the boisterous and curvaceous Walt Disney Concert Hall (2003) in downtown Los Angeles, which has been the centerpiece of the neighborhood's revitalization and has been labeled by the Los Angeles Times as "the most effective answer to doubters, naysayers, and grumbling critics an American architect has ever produced", the open-air Jay Pritzker Pavilion (2004) adjacent to Millennium Park in Chicago, and the understated New World Center (2011) in Miami Beach, which the LA Times called "a piece of architectur
caption: The tower at 8 Spruce Street in Lower Manhattan, completed in February 2011, has a stainless steel and glass exterior and is 76 stories high (2011)
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