Frank O. Gehry - Academy of Achievement Frank O. Gehry Gallery Listen to this achiever on What It Takes What It Takes is an audio podcast on iTunes produced by the American Academy of Achievement featuring intimate, revealing conversations with influential leaders in the diverse fields of endeavor: music, science and exploration, sports, film, technology, literature, the military and social justice. There's a range of creativity possible, and I think it behooves us to explore that envelope and push at it. Building the Inspiring Space Date of Birth February 28, 1929 Frank Gehry was born Ephraim Owen Goldberg in Toronto, Canada. He moved with his family to Los Angeles as a teenager in 1947 and later became a naturalized U.S. citizen. His father changed the family’s name to Gehry when the family immigrated. Ephraim adopted the first name Frank in his 20s; since then he has signed his name Frank O. Gehry. A young Ephraim Owen Goldberg with his parents, Irving and Thelma, at their home in Toronto, Canada.

Uncertain of his career direction, the teenage Gehry drove a delivery truck to support himself while taking a variety of courses at Los Angeles City College. He took his first architecture courses on a hunch, and became enthralled with the possibilities of the art, although at first he found himself hampered by his relative lack of skill as a draftsman. Sympathetic teachers and an early encounter with modernist architect Raphael Soriano confirmed his career choice. He won scholarships to the University of Southern California and graduated in 1954 with a degree in architecture. Frank as a young teenager. He moved to Los Angeles in 1947 and soon thereafter took his first architectural class. Los Angeles was in the middle of a post-war housing boom, and the work of pioneering modernists like Richard Neutra and Rudolph Schindler were an exciting part of the city’s architectural scene. Gehry went to work full-time for the notable Los Angeles firm of Victor Gruen Associates, where he had apprenticed as a student, but his work at Gruen was soon interrupted by compulsory military service.

After serving for a year in the United States Army, Gehry entered the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he studied city planning, but he returned to Los Angeles without completing a graduate degree. He briefly joined the firm of Pereira and Luckman before returning to Victor Gruen. Gruen Associates were highly successful practitioners of the severe utilitarian style of the period, but Gehry was restless. He took his wife and two children to Paris, where he spent a year working in the office of the French architect Andre Remondet and studied firsthand the work of the pioneer modernist Le Corbusier. Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, better known as Le Corbusier, the Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, author and one of the pioneers of modern architecture. Frank Gehry spent a year as a young architect in Paris, where he studied the work of Le Corbusier. (Photo by Willy Rizzo/Paris Match via Getty Images) Gehry and his family returned to Los Angeles in 1962, and he established his own firm, Gehry Associates, now known as Gehry Partners, LLP.

For a number of years, he continued to work in the established International Style, initiated by Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus, but he was increasingly drawn to the avant-garde arts scene growing up around the beach communities of Venice and Santa Monica. He spent more of his time in the company of sculptors and painters like Ed Kienholz, Bob Irwin, Ed Moses and Ed Ruscha, who were finding new uses for the overlooked by-products of industrial civilization. Frank Gehry began to look for an opportunity to express a more personal vision in his own work. Frank Gehry, “Fish Lamp”, metal wire, ColorCore formica, silicone, and wooden base. The first Fish Lamps, which were shown in “Frank Gehry: Unique Lamps” in 1984 at Gagosian Los Angeles, employed wire armatures molded into fish shapes, onto which shards of ColorCore are individually glued, creating clear allusions to the morphic attributes of real fish. Since the creation of the first lamp in 1984, Gehry’s Fish Lamps have been exhibited in London, Paris, Hong Kong, and Rome.

The fish has become a recurrent motif in Gehry’s work, as much for its “good design” as for its iconographical and natural attributes. Its quicksilver appeal informs the undulating, curvilinear forms of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain (1997); the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago (2004); and the Marqués de Riscal Vineyard Hotel in Elciego, Spain (2006), as well as the Fish Sculpture at Vila Olímpica in Barcelona (1989–92) and Standing Glass Fish for the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden (1986). In 2012, Gehry decided to revisit his earlier ideas, and began working on an entirely new group of Fish Lamps. The resulting works range in scale from life-size to outsize, and the use of ColorCore is bolder, incorporating larger and more jagged elements. The softly glowing Fish Lamps are full of whimsy and vigor. Curling and flexing in attitudes of simulated motion, these artificial creatures emit a warm, incandescent light.

This intimation of life, underscored by the almost organic textures of the nuanced surfaces, presents a spirited symbiosis of material, form, and function. He had his first brush with national attention when some furniture he had built from industrial corrugated cardboard experienced a sudden popularity. The line of furniture, called Easy Edges, was featured in national magazine spreads, and the Los Angeles architect experienced an unexpected notoriety. Although Gehry built imaginative houses for a number of artist friends, including Ruscha, in the 1970s, for most of the decade his larger works were distinguished but relatively conventional buildings such as the Rouse Company headquarters in Columbia, Maryland, and the Santa Monica Place shopping mall. Frank Gehry’s Santa Monica residence. A breakthrough in his work, it was initially resisted by Gehry’s neighbors. Gehry found a creative outlet in rebuilding his own home, converting what he called “a dumb little house with charm” into a showplace for a radically new style of domestic building.

He took common, unlovely elements of American homebuilding, such as chain link fencing, corrugated aluminum and unfinished plywood, and used them as flamboyant expressive elements, while stripping the interior walls of the house to reveal the structural elements. His Santa Monica neighbors were scandalized, but Gehry’s house attracted serious critical attention, and he began to employ more imaginative elements in his commercial work. A series of public structures in and around Los Angeles marked his evolution away from orthodox modernist practice, including the Frances Goldwyn Branch Library in Hollywood, the California Aerospace Museum and the Loyola University Law School. A number of his works in this period featured the unusual decorative motif of a Formica fish, and he designed a number of lamps and other objects in the form of snakes and fishes. 1992: One of the first public projects of Gehry is the Barcelona Fish — a huge fish sculpture placed on Barcelona’s waterfront for the 1992 Olympics. The monumental fish sculpture functions as a landmark in the Olympic Village, anchoring a retail complex designed by Gehry Partners. This fish sculpture was also a landmark in the history of Frank O.

Gehry & Associates, inaugurating the firm’s use of computer-aided design and manufacturing. The project’s financial and scheduling constraints prompted James M. Glymph, a partner in the firm, to search for a computer program that would facilitate the design and construction process, leading to the adoption of CATIA (computer aided three-dimensional interactive application). The sculpture was modeled in 3D and delivered to the fabricators as a 3D model. The fish is a frequently recurring motif in Gehry’s work, serving as an inspiration. By the mid-’80s, his work had attracted international attention, and he was commissioned to build the Vitra furniture factory in Basel, Switzerland, as well as the Vitra Design Museum in Weil-am-Rhein, Germany. These projects established him as a major presence on the international architecture scene. His buildings displayed a penchant for whimsy and playfulness previously unknown in serious architecture. Most distinctive of all was his ability to explode familiar geometric volumes and reassemble them in original new forms of unprecedented complexity, a practice the critics dubbed “deconstructivism.” His international reputation was confirmed when he received the 1989 Pritzker Prize, the world’s most prestigious architecture award.

The Rasin Building, also known as the Dancing House or the Fred and Ginger Building, in Prague, Czech Republic. Although he originally completed his design for the proposed Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles in 1989, funding shortages and political infighting delayed construction of the project for many years. The Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota, completed in 1990, was to be Gehry’s first monumental work in his own country, a billowing fantasy in brick and stainless steel. Meanwhile, his interest in collaboration with other artists was expressed in the fanciful design for the West Coast headquarters of the advertising firm Chiat Day, in Venice, California. The entrance to the building took the form of a pair of giant binoculars, created by the sculptors Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Frank Gehry joined forces with Dassault Systemes for a collaborative development to revolutionize the world of architecture. The three-dimensional computer-aided design solution developed for the aerospace industry, allowed Gehry to create technologically-sophisticated masterpieces such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

Although his main project for Los Angeles went unbuilt through the ’90s, he completed major projects in a number of other countries. His playful side reappeared in the “Dancing House” in the Czech capital, Prague. Comprising two undulating cylinders on a corner facing the river Vltava, the Czechs nicknamed the building “Fred and Ginger.” His proposal for a museum in Seoul, South Korea, which he discusses in his 1995 interview with the Academy of Achievement, was ultimately rejected, but an even more ambitious undertaking lay just ahead. Frank Gehry’s masterpiece, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. The museum has been voted as the most important piece of architecture created since 1980 and heralded as a “signal moment in architectural culture.” Gehry’s most spectacular design of the 1990s was that of the new Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, completed in 1997. Gehry first envisioned its form, like all his works, through a simple freestyle hand sketch, but breakthroughs in computer software had enabled him to build in increasingly eccentric shapes, sweeping irregular curves that were the antithesis of the severely rectilinear International Style.

Traditional modernists criticized the work as arbitrary, or gratuitously eccentric, but distinguished former exponents of the International Style, such as the late Philip Johnson, championed his work, and Gehry became the most visible of an elite cohort of highly publicized “starchitects.” He drew fire again with his design for the Experience Music Project Museum in Seattle, but in his adopted hometown of Los Angeles, a long-delayed project was reaching fruition. 2006: Marqués de Riscal Hotel in Elciego, Spain, designed by Gehry. The multi-colored titanium facade reflects the hues of Rioja, the silver foil shielding the cork and the gold mesh which adorns all Marqués de Riscal wine bottles. The year 2004 saw the long-awaited completion of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. The building opened to great public celebration and immediately became the sprawling city’s landmark building. Although built after his Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the design actually predated it and featured a similar panoply of exploding titanium. The splayed pipes of the hall’s massive pipe organ were likened by more than one writer to a packet of French fries, but the public response was ecstatic.

Gehry’s earlier experience building and renovating concert halls and amphitheaters had paid off in a facility that not only attracted international attention with its striking appearance, but thrilled musicians and listeners with its acoustically brilliant interior. Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall opened in 2004 in downtown Los Angeles, California. (John O’Neill) Over the years, Gehry has lent his imaginative designs to a number of products outside the field of architecture, including the Wyborovka Vodka bottle, a wristwatch for Fossil, jewelry for Tiffany & Co. and the World Cup of Hockey trophy. In 2006, the architect and his work were the subject of a feature-length documentary film, Sketches of Frank Gehry, by director Sydney Pollack. November 7, 2013: Frank Gehry, who has recently been announced as the architect to take on the redevelopment of Battersea Power Station, stands next to his fish lamps at the opening of his exhibition at the Gagosian Mayfair gallery, in London. Fish have been a constant creative inspiration throughout Frank Gehry’s career as an architect.

In the following years, Gehry immersed himself in a number of projects, including the Barclays Center sports arena in Brooklyn, New York, a concert hall for the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, and another branch of the Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi. Most ambitious of all is the massive Grand Street project, a plan to entirely remake the thoroughfare leading from Los Angeles City Hall to Disney Hall. When it is completed, a wide swath of downtown Los Angeles will bear the indelible stamp of its adopted son, Frank Gehry, and his restless imagination. In 2010, Vanity Fair magazine polled 52 of the world’s best-known architects and architectural critics, asking them to name the most significant works of architecture of the last 30 years. By an overwhelming margin they placed Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao at the top of the list. Frank Gehry’s Fondation Louis Vuitton in the Bois de Boulogne. (© Christopher Peterson/Splash News/Corbis) In 2014, the architect, age 85, completed one of his most dramatic structures yet: the billowing glass and steel Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, France.

The project was built as a center for contemporary art and culture, and to house the rapidly growing art collection of the charitable arm of the French luxury-goods company LVMH Moët Hennessy-Louis Vuitton. The 126,000-square-foot, 2.5-story building is sunk slightly below ground level to comply with the height limits of Paris’s main park, the Bois de Boulogne. The building’s glass and steel exterior framework, which Gehry calls the Verrière, was inspired in part by photographs of a greenhouse that had formerly stood on the site. The interior, which Gehry terms “the iceberg,” is formed by an array of white concrete cubes, supplying ample neutral space for the exhibition of art. The interior employs water in the form of a moat and a waterfall to reflect the ample light that floods all connecting areas of the structure. Located among the fields and trees of the Jardin d’Acclimatation, the historic children’s playground of the Bois de Boulogne, the Fondation Louis Vuitton may soon become the newest beloved landmark of the City of Light.

November 22, 2016: President Barack Obama awards Frank Gehry with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C. In 2016, Frank Gehry’s accomplishments were honored by President Barack Obama with the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The presidential awards citation, read in part, “never limited by conventional materials, styles, or processes, Frank Gehry’s bold and thoughtful structures demonstrate architecture’s power to induce wonder and revitalize communities. From his pioneering use of technology to the dozens of awe-inspiring sights that bear his signature style, to his public service as a citizen artist through his work with Turnaround Arts, Frank Gehry has proven himself an exemplar of American innovation.” Inducted in 1995 Date of Birth February 28, 1929 When the other products of a culture have faded from human memory, it is the works of architecture that remain to define an era for successive generations.

As the 20th century gave way to the 21st, it was hard to dispute that the definitive architect of the age was Frank Gehry, Canadian by birth, a resident of Los Angeles by choice. He first drew notice in his adopted city with works deploying commonplace industrial materials in unexpected ways, but he came to international prominence with works which exploded the geometry of traditional architecture to create a dramatic new form of expression. He deployed cutting-edge computer technology to realize shapes and forms of hitherto unimaginable complexity, such as the startling irregularities of his Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, or the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. In these monumental buildings, the uninhibited whimsy of his pencil sketches took shape in powerful structures of gleaming titanium. From Switzerland to Japan, from Santa Monica to Prague, his buildings have transformed human expectations of the designed space. Once mocked for their astonishing originality, his buildings have become the signature structures of the challenging times we live in. Watch full interview June 3, 1995 What first made you think of being an architect? What attracted you to this field?

Frank Gehry: My grandmother played with me on the floor with blocks when I was eight years old in Canada, and she got cuttings for her wood stove from the shop. They were like bandsaw and jigsaw cuttings, and they were odd shapes, and we used to play, make fantasy cities. Grandmother! So it was like a license from an adult to play, creative play. Anyway, I didn’t remember that until I was struggling and struggling with what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was a truck driver in L.A., going to City College, and I tried radio announcing, which I wasn’t very good at. Frank Gehry in front of his boyhood home in Toronto in the mid-1940s. (Courtesy of Frank O. Gehry) Keys to success — Passion I tried chemical engineering, which I wasn’t very good at and didn’t like, and then I remembered. You know, somehow I just started racking my brain about, “What do I like?” Where was I? What made me excited? And I remembered art, that I loved going to museums and I loved looking at paintings, loved listening to music.

Those things came from my mother, who took me to concerts and museums. I remembered Grandma and the blocks. And then what happened? Keys to success — Perseverance Frank Gehry: Just on a hunch, I tried some architecture classes. At first I didn’t do great. In fact, I flunked the first class in perspective drawing, and it really got me angry. So I went back the next semester and took it and got an A, and then I had an architecture drafting class, which the teacher and I got along real well. He was an architect. At the same time, I was taking classes at USC, summer classes in ceramics and art, drawing, art design, and the ceramics teacher — Glen Lukens at the time — was having a house designed by Raphael Soriano, and Glen somehow looked at me and said, “I just have another hunch.” He said, “I would like you to meet Soriano,” and I did, and I watched how Soriano — a guy with a black suit and a black tie and a beret, you know — I mean, he was a really funny guy.

But there was something about it that excited me, maybe the drama of it, maybe the theater of it, and he knew what he was doing. He was very Miesian. He did very stark things, and that all excited me. Based on Glen’s recommendation, I took a class at night in architectural design, and I did really well. I was skipped into second year. 2010: Frank Gehry seen in front of his creation, the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, in Las Vegas. What school was this? Frank Gehry: USC. That was the only architecture school at that time. Keys to success — Perseverance I couldn’t afford it, and they didn’t have scholarships for architects, but somehow I worked and got through. Then once I got in it, I was off to the races, except the first half of the second year, my teacher came in and called me in and said, “This isn’t for you. You’re not going to make it,” and somehow I worked through that. And that guy works at the airport. I see him every once in a while, the teacher.

I mean, he acknowledges his mistake, of course, but it’s — I mean, I just sort of kept going. It was dogged persistence once I got into it. What was the turn-on for you? How would you describe it to somebody who doesn’t know that much about architecture? What makes it exciting for you? Keys to success — Vision Frank Gehry: What got me excited in the beginning were the social issues. I come from a very lefty liberal family in Canada, and architecture looked like it was the panacea. You could make housing for the poor and make wonderful cities, city planning in the future and so on. That was the initial turn-on. That lasted me all the way through school, actually. When I got out of school I hit the brick wall. You can’t do any of that. It doesn’t exist. You can’t do it. There are no clients for social housing in America. There is no program, no nothing. City planning? Forget it. It’s a kind of bureaucratic nonsense. It has nothing to do with ideas. It only has to do with real estate and politics.

Keys to success — Passion I used to say, “I don’t want to do houses for rich people.” I always said that through school. “I’m just not going to do that.” But I started to find some excitement in the forms, the spaces, being able to conceive of something and then see it built. The process of building, the working with the craftsmen — or lack of craftsmen is more likely — but trying to. It is an energy, and it is a mind game too, trying to get these people motivated. I guess it’s like directing a movie. It’s similar, except there’s legal implications times jillions. But it’s really exciting when you get to the level I am at now, where I have a lot of freedom. I don’t get a lot of projects, but I get enough, and when I do get them, usually people want what I am doing and egg me on to explore things, and that’s exciting. Architect Frank O. Gehry working on early models for the Walt Disney Concert Hall with Michael Maltzan. To make a difference in the world? Frank Gehry: Make a difference in a microcosm, but in the world, we don’t know yet.

You say you hit a brick wall when you got out of school. When did that change? What was the turning point? Frank Gehry: I guess when I did my house. Keys to success — Integrity Up until the point where I did my house, which was in the late ’70s, most of the work — up until that point I think, I thought of myself as an architect, as a service business. I was working on Santa Monica Place. But I hadn’t had much freedom to really do things, and for the first time — even though it wasn’t a lot of money, we only had a budget of like forty, fifty thousand dollars — I was able to do what I wanted, exactly what I wanted, and explore and play and do things, and I realized that I couldn’t go back after that. My office changed at that point. The clients that we were working with all left. The house, I finished it. One of the major clients said to me — the first Santa Monica Place — said, “If you like this…” He was sitting in my living room.

He said, “If you like this, then you don’t like that.” He was pointing to Santa Monica Place, and I said, “Yeah, you’re right,” and we shook hands and decided not to work together anymore, and we never have. That was the Rouse Company in Maryland. I liked them too, but it wasn’t going anywhere. You have to be a big risk-taker, don’t you? Frank Gehry: Yeah. It’s not about making money. I think you stick your neck out a lot, but over time, you feel more confident. My house was strange. I mean some of the things I did, like the chain-link fence. It wasn’t about what people thought it was about. The chain-link fence, so much of that material is made and used and absorbed by the culture, and there is so much denial about it. I was fascinated by the denial, and I was trying to humanize it, so that if you are going to use it, at least use it, find some way to use it right or aesthetically more pleasing. Well, that backfired on me. Everybody thought I was making some kind of great “stick in the ribs” kind of thing about it.

Also, the house was me trying to find my middle class self in a middle class neighborhood. How do I relate to this? I guess I am here. I am with them. They have their cars on the front lawn. They have chain link. They have corrugated metal. They have all these things, and how am I going to? So I dealt with it, but when I dealt with it, it was like the neighbors thought I was making fun of them, which I wasn’t. Your house created quite a stir. Frank Gehry: It did, yeah. Is it true that there was a gunshot in the picture? Frank Gehry: Well, the police chief said it was architectural criticism. I heard two gunshots, but later he said it was some neighborhood stuff, and it was happening all over the neighborhood. What was it that provoked this kind of reaction? Could you tell us a little more about what you did with your house? Frank Gehry: I bought an old house, and I put a new house around it. I got interested in the dialogue between the old and the new and trying to sculpturally create a new entity, but that retained the qualities of the new as independent of the old.

I set myself goals like that when I started. I kind of pulled it off. I also wanted it to be seamless, that you couldn’t tell where it began and where it stopped, and that was very successful, and that was the power of it. In fact, critics would come in and would look at a rain spot on the plaster and say, “Is that on purpose or not?” They thought they were maligning me, and I thought that was just wonderful. That was exactly what I wanted them to worry about. Recently, I had to remodel it again, because my kids are grown up, and we needed to. Now it’s ten years later, and I couldn’t be me as I was then. I couldn’t tear the house down and start over again, which artistically would have been the right thing to do. I couldn’t sell it, because it wasn’t saleable. So I had to fix it, and once I started, it was like unraveling a sweater. What you see, if you go there now, is not seamless. You can see the old house and you can see the new house. I couldn’t hang onto it. I realized I was losing it. In fact, I had a dream.

I was hanging onto some parts of what I did in ’78 for dear life, and I realized they weren’t working with the new stuff. Some of this, because it was my house, I played out as we went. I don’t do that often, but in this case, I did some of that. I had a nightmare that a helicopter crashed into a Zeppelin, and the helicopter had a woman in a pink dress — and my house is pink, pink outside — flat against the hull — and she came crashing down on me in the street, and I pulled my mother to safety. I realized when I woke up, that it was about my house, that I was losing it. It made me resolve that I could go forward somehow. I don’t know why, it’s kind of mystical. But I did. I cut out all the stuff that I was hanging onto, and after that, I slept. It was wonderful. Something was going on. It was a panic of losing something that I had really worked on, and now it’s becoming something else, but it’s not as good as it was. It’s not. I know it isn’t — yet. It will be, I hope. Mr.

Gehry, that chair that you’re sitting in is quite interesting. Is there something that you can tell us about that? Frank Gehry: The nice thing is you can just pick a piece off and throw it away if you don’t like it. I had made some chairs earlier, and they were shown at Bloomingdale’s. I made them out of paper. They achieved some kind of commercial success and it scared me, so I stopped them, because I wasn’t ready to be a successful furniture designer. I still wanted to be an architect. Somehow I thought that was going to end my life, so I stopped them, and I started making chairs that I thought nobody would like, and that’s what these are. What are those made out of? Is that cardboard? Frank Gehry: It’s paper. It’s a honeycomb paper that is made as an in-fill between two pieces of metal or wood, as a structural panel. How do you get your ideas? Where do you find your inspiration when you’re designing a building? Frank Gehry: For me it’s a free association, but it grows out of a sense of responsibility, sense of values, human values.

The importance of relating to the community, and all of those things…and the client’s budget, their pocketbook, the client’s wishes. But even within that there’s a… There is a range of creativity possible, and I think it behooves us to explore that envelope and push at it. It comes out of an intuition, or a learned intuition, I guess. You study a long time ’til you can do it. But it’s from looking around you, it’s from understanding what’s happening in the culture, what’s happening in the world. It’s a really big picture. Because there are no real rules. If you look at the world around us, and you think of all these adult and intelligent people who have gathered together over the years to create the biggest mess. It always looks like that, whatever period. It looked like that when I was a kid, it looks like that now. And yet, somehow we muddle forward and make things. So out of that comes inspiration, believe it or not, and leads to ideas. For instance, I’ve been interested in the sense of movement in architecture. Well, who cares whether a building looks like it’s moving or not?

Maybe they shouldn’t, but that’s something that interested me. Maybe it comes from the fast society, the fast world around me, that I’m trying to make some kind of connection to. So I think you’ve just got to keep your eyes open, keep your ears open and understand what’s going on. And then play with it, and move with it, and make your expression grow from that. Your designs are considered unconventional and innovative. How did you find these forms? Frank Gehry: Slowly, by doing the things I’ve already said, not the least of which is studying history. You develop a base of information. You look at what’s around you, you take things in, you absorb. I think the most important thing is the people, finally, it’s a human thing. It’s how you interact with people and how you interpret their wishes and yearnings. It’s intuitive. It’s very difficult to explain why you do things, why you curve something. It becomes an evolution of thought and ideas. I feel like the picture of the cat pushing the ball of string. You just keep pushing it and it moves around. Then it falls off the table and creates this beautiful line in space.

I think creativity… I guess (Henry) James wrote that it was like poking around in a deep well with a big stick, and every once in a while you would pull this stick out and something was there. These ideas are not easy to describe. They’re easy to rationalize after the fact, like the sense of movement is easy to rationalize, or certain materials, or certain constructs, and shapes, and forms. But basically, I am trying to make buildings and spaces that will inspire people, that will move people, that will get a reaction. Not just to get a reaction, but to get a positive reaction, hopefully, a place that they like to be in. My greatest thrill is to still be friends with the clients and people that helped me make these buildings. Do you think that society curtails individual imagination? And if so, why? Frank Gehry: I don’t think it does. I think it’s wide open. You curtail your own imagination if you do it. Certainly there are constraints: budgets and politics and sites. Gravity is a constraint, finally. But those are, to any artist, manageable. Every artist confronts a series of issues that are constraints.

Those constraints are then turned by the artist into a positive force, to make something, make their mud pie, whatever it is. I think we learn to do that. I had a house recently with no constraints, and I had a horrible time with it. I had to look in the mirror a lot. Who am I? Why am I doing this? What is this all about? What is the social relevance of this? There was none. Finally, the owner gave me a quote from Oscar Wilde. I can’t remember the quote, but it was in essence that everything didn’t have to be relevant, that you could make a folly, and that there was some value in that. I lived on that for a while and made the so-called folly, which he’s not going to build anyway. I think we turn those constraints into action. You’ve spoken about what you hoped to express in a given building, a feeling of movement for instance, but how do you reconcile that with the fact that people also need to use those buildings? Frank Gehry: They wouldn’t get built if they didn’t respond to the programs. In one case it’s the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

Another is in Toledo, Ohio, it’s an art school. All of these buildings have very strict functional programs that have to be honored, and met and explored. I look at these programs, and many times question them, and try to present the clients with opportunities they haven’t thought of. That involves them in the process. So at the end, a building is a product of working with the client. One is in Czechoslovakia, Prague, on the beautiful river. It’s adjacent to a 19th century building. Even though it has its own body language, it fits very well into the form of the city. I think the function is like the budget, you have to respect it, honor it and deal with it. And if you disagree with it, don’t do it. Has working in other cultures influenced you in your architecture? Frank Gehry: I’m very concerned with that issue today (1995) in Seoul, Korea. I’m doing a museum on a very tight urban site, surrounded by half a dozen of the worst high-rise towers I’ve ever seen, the worst copies of American commercial architecture. But on the diagonals, the site looks at the mountains and looks at some shrines and temples.

One of the shrines, Jongmyo, which I’d never heard of, has got to be at least in the top ten buildings ever built on this earth, and not many people know about it. It’s an extraordinary building, and it’s within view of my site, just like these others. How do you fit in contextually? Even though the bad buildings are there, they’re built, they’re by human beings, there has to be a certain accommodation to them. You can’t ignore them. So this is kind of an American image transplanted, and yet there is this landscape and these beautiful shrines. How to make these connections? And sitting right next to my site is a palace, a one-story Korean palace. And a 19th century two-story building. It’s not very good, but it’s protected building. All of these elements, I’m trying to gather them into my head and use them in some way. And then this building, as a museum, it has a function, it has galleries, and will show international art, so it has an international requirement. Then you get into all the requirements of showing art in galleries and so on.

In the end, the historic elements of the culture, the strengths of Korea, at this point I think have to do with gardens and landscapes, because most of their buildings were torn down by invaders over the years. How to recapture, how to understand, culturally, the needs of this community that needs to find a pride in art again, because it was destroyed for them. They’re trying to search for that. So I’m looking at all of those things for this building. Will I succeed? I don’t know, but I have to be interpretive, I have to bring all of those elements in: the history, the current, the present, the chaos. How soon might we see that building? Frank Gehry: Well, I’m presenting it in a couple of weeks. If they like it, we might see it. But if they don’t, we won’t. Have new technologies and computers affected your work, and how? Frank Gehry: I try very hard to get the energy of the idea, the first idea, the drawing, and that character to the finished building. And I hate all the computer images that I’ve been confronted with, from the beginning until today.

However, since I’ve gotten involved with buildings that have shape to them, that are very difficult to describe to a contractor, to a builder, I’ve made a relationship by some circuitous route, through IBM, to the people in France that make the Mirage airplane, Dassault. And they have a software, or a program, CATIA, for making airplanes, that allowed us to describe steel structures and curved structures in a way that demystified them for the builder, so that they weren’t afraid and didn’t superimpose fear costs on the project. We’ve been very successful in that, and I think it’s turned the tide. In other words, most architects and contractors are in mortal battle from the day they start. The contractor is scared of the costs and losing money, and the architect is pushing to get his or her dream to fruition, and they’re in conflict. And I found, through this funny gadget, that the architect can become the master builder, can become the leader, can direct the project, and the contractor likes it. They would rather be the child in the equation than the parent. They’d rather have the conceiver take a parental role.

So it’s through this technology that I’ve found, in the few projects now, that it’s been very possible to change that relationship, in a positive way, for everybody. Does working with computers make a difference in terms of two-dimensional and three-dimensional thinking? Frank Gehry: I don’t like the computer, except as a gadget to explain myself to the contractors. But I did, in the course of working with it, get into trying to design on it, even though I hate the imagery. I likened it to putting my hand in the fire and seeing how long you could keep it in there before I pulled it out. So I would sit at the thing. It took about three minutes to four minutes before the fire got too hot and I’ll pull it out. But in doing that, I did design a form that I never had before. It looked like a prehistoric horse’s skull. It was interesting. I think it is possible. I think it’s just a training thing, if you’re aware that you’re putting your hand in the fire for a few minutes… What can you predict about the future of architecture?

Frank Gehry: I hang on to democracy, sort of, even though it’s not perfectly practiced, that this has changed the game a lot. And you see a lot of architects, a lot of ideas being more accepted. There are more all-star architects today than there were when I was a kid. There are many different kinds of work, signatures in work, and we do co-exist. I like Bob Stern’s work a lot. So we can be different, we can co-exist. We’re going to have to find ways to make cities that express that. They can’t be the historical, idyllic 19th century model anymore, because we’re not living like that anymore, and our world isn’t like that. We’re finding ways to move forward, while learning from the past. You don’t ignore it, you don’t destroy it, but you build from it. I think pluralism is the most optimistic. There are now many ideas, many possibilities. How do you bring that together into a new city form? What role do you see yourself playing in that?

Frank Gehry: You just do your work, and if somebody likes it, they like it, and if they don’t, you don’t try to sell them on it. I think that most of the world wants to live in the past, and I think it is going to catch up with us at some point, and I don’t know when that’s going to happen. Maybe it’s my fantasy. Maybe I want it to happen because I’m tired of it. I think we should start living in the present in trying to deal with it. It seems like it would be much more positive. I think the blurring of the lines between art and architecture has got to happen. I don’t think these categories are working very well. I am finding the crossover much more exhilarating and much more interesting, and the collaboration much more interesting. In architecture, I don’t think you can build Rockefeller Center today. It represents a different politic, a different ethic, a different idea. The grand monument kind of thing? Frank Gehry: It just represents the power of the Rockefellers, and I see it breaking down and becoming much more pluralistic, which leads me to collaboration.

I think that our politics suggest that many ideas could coexist, and the richness of ideas coexisting interests me, and it’s led me to collaborating with other architects, with other artists, and I find that exhilarating and very fruitful. Things happen. I just collaborated with Philip Johnson and Claes Oldenburg and his wife and Richard Serra and Larry Bell. On what project? Announcement: Frank Gehry | The Pritzker Architecture Prize The Pritzker Architecture Prize Announcement California Architect Frank Gehry Named 1989 Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize Frank Gehry of Santa Monica, California has been selected as the twelfth Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate. Although born in Canada, he became a citizen of the United States in 1950. He is the sixth American to receive the prestigious prize since it was established by The Hyatt Foundation in 1979. Architects from six other countries have also been so honored in the past decade.

The prize, consisting of a $100,000 grant, a medallion and formal certificate, will be presented in a ceremony on May 18 in Nara, Japan at Todai-Ji Buddhist Temple, the world's largest and oldest wooden structure, with the status of a National Treasure in that country. Having just celebrated his sixtieth birthday, Gehry has achieved considerable fame in recent years due in part to some of his more unusual projects, making use of materials such as chain link fencing, cardboard, and corrugated metal in unorthodox ways. His own home in Santa Monica is a well-known example. Gehry received his Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Southern California in 1954, with further study at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1956 and 1957. His career was launched with the design of a highly regarded Los Angeles landmark, the Danziger Studio/Residence in 1964. A retrospective exhibition of his work, organized by the Walker Art Center of Minneapolis, Minnesota, toured major museums over the past two years, drawing record crowds.

In Los Angeles, the recent awarding of a commission to design the Walt Disney Concert Hall for the Music Center, estimated to cost one hundred million dollars to some of his more unusual projects, brought him added acclaim. In the past year, he has also received a commission for a major high-rise building for Progressive Corporation in Cleveland, and he won the competition for another in New York. Gehry has received more than 25 national and regional AIA Awards, the Brunner Prize, and many others. He is a much sought after lecturer for museums, architecture societies and universities. In addition to his building designs, he has become widely known for his cardboard furniture concepts, and for designing museum exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art—from Art Treasures of Japan to the Treasures of Tutankhamun as well as for the works of contemporary artists. Jay A.

Pritzker, president of The Hyatt Foundation, announced the 1989 choice of the jury, saying, "The great body of work of architect Frank Gehry, which includes residences, museums, libraries, schools, shops, concert halls, restaurants, all manner of public buildings, and even a hay barn, demonstrates a range of styles that defies classification, but certainly warrants recognition for his contributions to the art of architecture." Bill Lacy secretary to the jury, reported the formal citation from the selection panel, that reads as follows: "In an artistic climate that too often looks backward rather than toward the future, where retrospectives are more prevalent than risk-taking, it is important to honor the architecture of Frank Gehry. Refreshingly original and totally American, proceeding as it does from his populist Southern California perspective, Gehry's work is a highly refined, sophisticated and adventurous aesthetic that emphasizes the art of architecture.

Bill Lacy, the executive director of the Pritzker Prize, wrote in his 1991 book, 100 Contemporary Architects, “As an architect/philosopher/artist, Dutchman Rem Koolhaas has expanded and continues to expand our perceptions of cities and civilization.” Refreshingly original and totally American, proceeding as it does from his populist Southern California perspective, Gehry's work is a highly refined, sophisticated and adventurous aesthetic that emphasizes the art of architecture. His sometimes controversial, but always arresting body of work, has been variously described as iconoclastic, rambunctious and impermanent, but the jury in making this award, commends this rest less spirit that has made his buildings a unique expression of contemporary society and its ambivalent values. Gehry's architecture reflects his keen appreciation for the same social forces that have informed the work of outstanding artists through history, including many contemporaries with whom he often collaborates. His designs, if compared to American music, could best be likened to Jazz, replete with improvisation and a lively unpredictable spirit.

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. Although the prize is for a lifetime of achievement, the jury hopes Mr. Gehry will view it as encouragement for continuing an extraordinary 'work in progress,' as well as for his significant contributions thus far to the architecture of the twentieth century." The jury that selected Gehry consists of its chairman and founding member, J. Carter Brown, director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; and (alphabetically) Giovanni Agnelli, chairman of Fiat, from Torino, Italy Ada Louise Huxtable, author and architectural critic of New York; architect Ricardo Legorreta of Mexico City; 1982 Laureate/architect Kevin Roche of Hamden, Connecticut; and Jacob Rothschild, chair man of the board of trustees of the National Gallery of Art in London, England.

Why architect Frank Gehry is thinking of coming back to Toronto | Toronto Star Why architect Frank Gehry is thinking of coming back to Toronto The Canadian-born architect mulls leaving his beloved Los Angeles. The Frank Gehry exhibit is currently taking place at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. (Fredrik Nilsen) Frank Gehry was born in Canada but has lived in California for most of his life. Will he come back now? (AFP/GETTY IMAGES file photo) By Martin Knelman Entertainment Sun., Feb. 21, 2016 LOS ANGELES, CALIF—Frank Gehry, who turns 87 on Feb. 28 and is widely regarded as the greatest living architect in the world, was born in Toronto. But if you didn’t happen to visit the retrospective in the Pompidou Centre in Paris that ended last year, and you can’t get to the spectacular museum exhibition of his career highlights currently wowing visitors to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art until March 20, then you will miss it.

That’s especially ironic because, as Gehry told me the other day, lately he has been contemplating the idea of moving back to Toronto, which he left as a teenager in 1947 when his family moved to L.A. That’s a stunning idea, especially since the LACMA show — which opens with a blow-up of Gehry’s handwritten love letter to his adopted city — has become an occasion for Gehry and L.A. to embrace one another. “Dear Los Angeles,” the letter begins. “We met many years ago when were both young and we had stars in our eyes and wanted to make a beautiful oasis, a beautiful place.” And it concludes with this: “We’ve been good partners and we are stronger for it. Let’s continue taking care of each other.” Article Continued Below The letter is touching and heartfelt, but for me there’s a subtext with a frustrating question. Isn’t it about time for our city to embrace Gehry and claim him as ours? I’d say the answer is a resounding yes, but in that case, why isn’t this exhibit coming to Toronto?

Gehry himself doesn’t know the answer to that question, as I discovered when I reached him on his cellphone while he was travelling in Europe. “I didn’t organize the show,” he explained, answering the phone even though he was sleeping when it rang. “It was all done through the Pompidou. I’m glad L.A. saw it. I think David Mirvish tried to make it happen in Toronto.” Mirvish has spent several years and millions of dollars on a huge multi-faceted project designed by Gehry on King St. W., which would transform Toronto’s entertainment district. And that project is prominently featured in the exhibition currently at LACMA. “Of course I would help if someone wanted to bring it to Toronto,” Gehry said. Then came that stunning disclosure, almost as a throwaway footnote: “Lately I’ve been toying with the idea of moving back there.” That would close the circle on a brilliant career that has encapsulated a tale of two cities and two countries. “I don’t even know if moving back would be possible now,” he mused. Then he added, in what I took to be a playful reference to his public love letter to L.

A: “I guess it’s a matter of who do I love better.” But why, I wondered, would he even consider moving back to T.O. after almost seven hugely successful decades of living and working in L. A.? Especially since, as he says in his public love letter to L.A.: “Anywhere else in the world I would have had difficulty taking the route that you afforded me.” His answer to my question: “It’s because of the politics here.” He left me to fill in the dots. Despite building a huge business empire, Gehry has always been a left-leaning liberal who prefers to hang out with artists and other creative people advancing the cultural frontier. He didn’t say so, but I understood what he meant: He’d be horrified by the prospect of living in a country dominated by right-wing Republicans with Donald Trump or Ted Cruz in the White House. Earlier this month, Gehry was on stage twice — once at the Walt Disney Concert Hall (one of his greatest buildings) and once at LACMA — being interviewed about his brilliant career and his happy partnership with L.A. There was something magical about seeing the creative force behind it on stage at Disney Hall.

It’s one of his greatest buildings, the saga of which is featured in the current LACMA exhibit, along with such other Gehry triumphs as the Guggenheim Spain in Bilbao. Indeed, plans for Disney Hall had been on hold for years, and it was the acclaim for the miracle in Bilbao (opened in 1997) that finally made Disney Hall a go. Gehry’s Canadian ID was beefed up in 2003, when he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada, and a few years later, when the Art Gallery of Ontario reopened after being reinvented by Gehry. No doubt the AGO would be the obvious venue if the Pompidou show — which coincided with the opening of Gehry's new building for the Louis Vuitton Foundation in the Bois du Boulogne area of Paris — were brought to Toronto. But Gehry explains: “I’m not good at getting involved in these things. I don’t focus on them, and I don’t even know the new director at the AGO.” I suggested there are other venues besides the AGO where the show could go in Toronto, such as the Ontario Science Centre.

It’s especially frustrating for Toronto to take a pass on this exhibit, given the fact that it includes the Mirvish King St. project. Indeed of the 13 future projects in development on view, LACMA curator Stephanie Barron told me the Toronto one is her favourite. And according to Gehry, that project is all set to go, after a revised, scaled-down proposal was completed in response to issues raised by Toronto city planner Jennifer Keesmaat. “We’ve finished the design,” says Gehry. And the pricing and budget have been done. “There’s no hitch from our side.” Will it be built? It may take years before we know. But first, Toronto needs to see this exhibition. Frank Gehry, Architect • Biography & Facts Frank Gehry Architect Frank Owen Gehry, CC (born Frank Owen Goldberg; (1929-02-28)28 February 1929) is a Jewish architect born in Canada, currently a United States resident based in Los Angeles.A number of his buildings, including his private residence, have become world-renowned tourist 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; Experience Music Project in Seattle; New World Center in Miami Beach; Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis; Dancing House in Prague; the Vitra Design Museum and the museum MARTa Herford in Germany; the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto; the Cinémathèque française in Paris; and 8 Spruce Street in New York City. But it was his private residence in Santa Monica, California, that jump-started his career, lifting it from the status of "paper architecture"—a phenomenon that many famous architects have experienced in their formative decades through experimentation almost exclusively on paper before receiving their first major commission in later years. Gehry is also the designer of the future National Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial.

Frank Gehry - IMDb IMDb Frank Gehry was born on February 28, 1929 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada as Ephraim Goldberg. See full bio » Born: a list of 281 people created 20 Jul 2012 a list of 172 people created 31 Aug 2014 a list of 21 people created 1 month ago Do you have a demo reel? Add it to your IMDbPage How much of Frank Gehry's work have you seen? User Polls 2011 Gregory Way TV (TV Series) - Networking (2011) ... (as Frank O. Gehry) Hide 2015 Miles Ahead (associate producer) Hide 2008 Visual Acoustics (Documentary) (special thanks - as Frank O. Gehry) 2008 Speed Racer (the producers wish to thank) 2004 Arthur (TV Series) (thanks - 1 episode) - Castle in the Sky/Tipping the Scales (2004) ... (thanks - as Frank O.

Gehry) Hide 2016 The Characters (TV Series) Himself 2015 Imagine (TV Series documentary) Himself 2014 Le grand journal de Canal+ (TV Series documentary) Himself 2012-2013 Tavis Smiley (TV Series) Himself - Guest 2011 Fareed Zakaria GPS (TV Series) Himself - Guest 2011 60 Minutes (TV Series documentary) Himself - Architect (segment "The Billionaire") - Mount Athos/The Billionaire (2011) ... Himself - Architect (segment "The Billionaire") (as Frank O. Gehry) 2010 Der Gruen Effekt (TV Movie documentary) (as Frank O. Gehry) 2010 Masterclass (TV Series) 1997-2009 Charlie Rose (TV Series) Himself - Guest / Himself Himself (as Frank O.

Gehry) 2008 Wisdom (Video documentary) 2008 Independent Lens (TV Series documentary) Himself 2005 American Masters (TV Series documentary) Himself 2005 The Simpsons (TV Series) Himself - The Seven-Beer Snitch (2005) ... Himself (voice) 2004 Arthur (TV Series) 2002 Superstructures of America (TV Series documentary) Himself - Design Principal, Gehry & Associates 1994 Adrienne Clarkson Presents (TV Series documentary) Himself 1984 Beyond Utopia: Changing Attitudes in American Architecture (Documentary) (Himself) (as Frank O. Gehry) Hide - Episode #1.10 (2006) ... Himself (as Frank O. Gehry) 2005 Architectures (TV Series documentary) Himself, Architect - Bilbao Guggenheim Museum (2005) ... Himself, Architect (as Frank O. Gehry) Related Videos 2 Biographical Movies | 1 Interview | 5 Articles | 1 Magazine Cover Photo | See more » Alternate Names: Did You Know?

Personal Quote: [observation, 2016] Some forty years ago, I stood before a lifelike vision of a charioteer at a museum in Delphi that brought me to tears. I realized then that part of our mission was to create spaces that expressed feelings. Trivia: In 2001, he renovated the wine cellar in the home of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston . Pitt subsequently did an informal apprenticeship in Gehry's Los Angeles office. See more » Star Sign: Frank Gehry | Canadian American architect | Britannica.com Canadian American architect Alternative Titles: Ephraim Owen Goldberg, Frank O. Gehry, Frank Owen Gehry Frank Gehry Frank Gehry, in full Frank Owen Gehry, original name Ephraim Owen Goldberg, also called Frank O. Gehry (born February 28, 1929, Toronto , Ontario, Canada ), Canadian American architect and designer whose original, sculptural, often audacious work won him worldwide renown. The American Center, Paris, designed by Frank O. Gehry. © Scott Frances/ Esto 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. Reacting, like many of his contemporaries, against the cold and often formulaic Modernist buildings that had begun to dot many cityscapes, Gehry began to experiment with unusual expressive devices and to search for a personal vocabulary. In his early work he built unique, quirky structures that emphasized human scale and contextual integrity . His early experiments are perhaps best embodied by the “renovations” he made to his own home (1978, 1991–94) in Santa Monica , California. Gehry essentially stripped the two-story home down to its frame and then built a chain-link and corrugated-steel frame around it, complete with asymmetrical protrusions of steel rod and glass. Gehry made the traditional bungalow—and the architectural norms it embodied—appear to have exploded wide open.

He continued those design experiments in two popular lines of corrugated cardboard furniture , Easy Edges (1969–73) and Experimental Edges (1979–82). Gehry’s ability to undermine the viewer’s expectations of traditional materials and forms led him to be grouped with the deconstructivist movement in architecture, although his play upon architectural tradition also caused him to be linked to postmodernism. Treating each new commission as “a sculptural object, a spatial container, a space with light and air,” Gehry was rewarded with commissions the world over throughout the 1980s and ’90s. These works possessed the deconstructed quality of his Santa Monica home but began to display a pristine grandeur that suited his increasingly public projects. Notable structures from the period include the Vitra Furniture Museum and Factory (1987) in Weil am Rhein, Germany; the American Center (1988–94) in Paris; and the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum (1990–93) at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis . The Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, designed by Frank O.

… Mike Hicks Ringling Bros. Folds Its Tent Gehry’s reputation soared in the late 1990s. By that time Gehry’s trademark style had become buildings that resemble undulating free-form sculpture. This form arguably reached its zenith in his Guggenheim Museum (1991–97) in Bilbao , Spain. In that structure Gehry combined curvaceous titanium forms with interconnecting limestone masses to create a sculptural feat of engineering. He further explored those concerns in the Experience Music Project (1995–2000) in Seattle . Constructed of a fabricated steel frame wrapped in colourful sheet metal, the structure was, according to Gehry, modeled on the shape of a guitar —particularly, a smashed electric guitar. As with the Guggenheim structure, he employed cutting-edge computer technology to uncover the engineering solutions that could bring his sculptural sketches to life. In his 2008 renovation of the Art Museum of Ontario in his hometown, Gehry retained the original building (1918) but removed an artistically unsuccessful entryway that had been added in the 1990s.

Although the updated museum shows many characteristic Gehry touches, one critic called it “one of Mr. Gehry’s most gentle and self-possessed designs.” Gehry became known for his work on music venues . The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles was designed before the Bilbao museum but was completed in 2003, to great acclaim. The Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago ’s Millennium Park was completed in 2004. Gehry also built a performing arts centre (1997–2003) for Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York , and designed the New World Center (completed 2011) for the New World Symphony orchestral academy in Miami Beach , Florida. As the 21st century continued, Gehry continued to receive numerous large-scale commissions. Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, designed by Frank O. Gehry. age fotostock/SuperStock Frank O. Gehry - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up) (born 1929). Canadian American architect Frank O. Gehry designed daring and controversial public buildings.

His remarkable structures evoked the works of sculptors and were well known for their playful, asymmetrical exteriors and the use of materials traditionally limited to industry. His buildings include museums, concert halls, theaters, public housing complexes, banks, and warehouses. Some critics denounced Gehry for designing what has been termed "collision architecture," which is chaotic and raw in appearance. Other critics, however, praised Gehry for his imagination and his determination to elevate contemporary architecture to the level of art. Article Contributors

Question: In which country was architect Frank Gehry born?
Answer: Canada