American Architecture
Series
Frank O. Gehry
Biography of Canadian-American Architect,
Founder of Deconstructivism.
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American Architecture
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Frank O. Gehry (b.1929)Contents • Gehry's Architecture |
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ARCHITECTURAL TERMINOLOGY
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Among the greatest architects of late 20th century architecture, the Canadian-American Pritzker Prize-winning designer Frank O. Gehry is the leading exponent of Deconstructivism, a postmodernist style of architecture developed in Europe and the USA during the period 1980-2000. His most famous buildings include: the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (1991-97); the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles (1988-2003); the Weisman Museum, Minneapolis (1990-93); the Nationale Nederlanden Building, Prague (1992-97), popularly known as "Fred and Ginger"; and the Experience Music Project, Seattle (1999-2000). Noted for his pioneering use of computer software for the design and fabrication of his structures - many of which are made from high-tech materials - his architecture is typically characterized by flowing lines, and surfaces that vary from titanium cladding (Bilbao Guggenheim) to metal Blobitectural modular parts (Experience Music Project). Although criticized by numerous art critics as well as fellow American architects, for his design for the proposed Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial, among others, Gehry is also acclaimed as one of the most exciting contributors to postmodernist art and the leader of the so-called "Los Angeles School" or "Santa Monica School" of American architecture. His academic credentials are also impressive: he is a Distinguished Professor of Architecture at Columbia University; the Judge Widney Professor of Architecture at the University of Southern California (USC); a former Charlotte Davenport Professor of Architecture at Yale University; and a former holder of the Eliot Noyes Chair at Harvard University. A highly innovative contributor to American art, Gehry is, according to Vanity Fair magazine, "the most important architect of our age". |
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Born Ephraim Owen Goldberg, into a Polish-Jewish family in Toronto, Ontario, his enthusiasm for building futuristic cities out of scraps of wood was nurtured from a young age by his grandmother, using leftover oddments from her husband's hardware store. In 1947, at the age of 18, he moved with his family to Los Angeles and the family's name was changed from Goldberg to Gehry. He later became a US citizen. Unsure of what career to choose, Gehry took a job driving a delivery truck, while attending a number of courses at Los Angeles City College. After various false starts he decided to try architecture and - despite some difficulty with his drawing skills - won several scholarships to the University of Southern California, from where, in 1954, he graduated top of his class with a degree in architecture. After graduating, Gehry joined the prestigious Los Angeles architectural firm of Victor Gruen Associates. At the time, LA was experiencing a post-war housing boom, while innovative individual designs by modern artists like Richard Neutra (1892-1970) and Rudolph M Schindler (1887-1953) added to the excitement of the city's architectural scene. Following a year's interruption for compulsory military service, Gehry moved with his wife and children to Cambridge, to study city planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, but returned (disillusioned) to Los Angeles without completing his masters degree. After a short period, during which time he returned to Victor Gruen Associates, he left LA for a year's stay in Paris, France, where he spent a year working for the French architect Andre Remondet, while studying the work of the pioneer modernist Le Corbusier (1887-1965). Returning to Los Angeles with his family in 1962, he founded his own firm, Gehry Associates, and focused on International Style architecture, initiated by the Bauhaus design school, under director Walter Gropius (1883-1969), and championed by ex-Bauhaus member Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969), the hugely influential founder of the Second Chicago School. However, Gehry was increasingly attracted to the avant-garde art scene centered on the beach communities of Venice and Santa Monica. It was here that he met a number of top contemporary artists, including the Ed Kienholz (1927-94) and the Pop artist Ed Ruscha (b.1937), who were (like Marcel Duchamp before them) incorporating 'found' industrial products in their installations, sculptures and paintings, as part of the California "funk" art movement of the 1960s and early 70s. Apart from a short burst of national media attention when "Easy Edges", a line of furniture which he had made out of corrugated cardboard, was featured in national magazine spreads, his creative output was limited to a small number of innovative designs for residential homes (mostly for friends), and a number of relatively conventional building complexes, like the Rouse Company headquarters in Maryland, and the Santa Monica Place shopping mall. Interestingly, it was his home in Santa Monica, California, that jump-started his career. Adopting the "junk art" approach of Kienholz and others, Gehry converted his ordinary house into a model for a new style of domestic architecture, with stripped walls and exposed structural elements, using a combination of unusual materials (such as corrugated aluminum, chain link fencing and unfinished plywood). The finished structure received serious critical attention and led him to perform further experiments in which he combined unusual materials and unconventional techniques to create seemingly unstable structures, such as the California Aerospace Museum, the Frances Goldwyn Branch Library in Hollywood, and the Loyola University Law School. This avant-garde style of architecture soon became known as Deconstructivism. During the 1980s and 90s, California witnessed the rise of "Deconstructivism" a style of architecture that resembled a mutant form of Euclidean geometry: one that largely ignored the traditional principles of proportion and created discordant forms that often defied the laws of gravity. The style was first showcased in 1988 at an exhibition entitled "Deconstructive Architecture", organized by Philip Johnson (1906-2005) - the man who, back in 1932, introduced the International Style of architecture to America - which was held at the Museum of Modern Art, in New York. As well as Gehry, the leading pioneers of Deconstructivist architecture included: Daniel Libeskind, Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas and Bernard Tschumi. Deconstructivist Buildings Designed by Frank O Gehry Vitra Design Museum, Well am Rhein
(1987-89) Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles
(1988-2003) Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (1991-97) Nationale Nederlanden Building, Prague
(1992-97) DG Bank Apartments, Berlin (1995-2001) Experience Music Project, Seattle
(1999-2000) Other Leading 20th Century Architects Here is a short selection of some of the most influential architects of the last century. • Frank
Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) |
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• For more about postmodernist architecture in America, see: Homepage.
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