FRANK GEHRY (February 28, 1929 Present) Canadian-American Architect The most important architect of our age Vanity

y Fair BRIEF BIOGRAPHY Frank Owen Goldberg was his real name. He was born on February 28, 1929 (age 81) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Partly spends Sunday mornings at his Grandfather's Hardware Store where in he would spend time drawing with his Father and his Mother which introduced him to the world of Art. At the age of 17, he moved with his family to Los Angeles, California. Where in, he got a job driving a delivery truck. Studied at Los Angeles City College and eventually graduated from the University of Southern Californias School of Architecture. After graduation from USC in 1954, he spent time away from the field of Architecture in numerous other jobs. Such as, serving in the United States Army.

Most recently, Gehry has combined sensuous curving forms with complex deconstructive massing, achieving significant new results.

DESIGN PHILOSOPHY Every Building is by its very nature a sculpture. You cant help it. Sculpture is a 3-dimensional object and so is a building I approach each building as a sculptural object, a spatial container, a space with light and air, a response to context and appropriateness of feeling and spirit to this container. This sculpture, the user begins his baggage, his program, and interacts with it to accommodate his needs. If I cant do that Ive failed. CELEBRITY STATUS 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. The term usually refers to architects known for dramatic, influential designs that often achieve fame and notoriety through their spectacular effect. Other notable celebrity architects include Jean Nouvel, Zaha Hadid, Thom Mayne, Steven Holl, Rem Koolhaas, and Norman Foster. Gehry 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 The Simpsons in the episode "The Seven-Beer Snitch", where he parodied himself by intimating that his ideas are derived by looking at a crumpled paper ball. He also voiced himself on the TV show Arthur, where he helped Arthur and his friends design a new treehouse. Steve Sample, President of the University of Southern California, told Gehry that, "...After George Lucas, you are our most prominent graduate." DOCUMENTARY

Later, He studied City Planning at Harvard Graduate School of Design. In 1952, He Married Anita Snyder, which whom she told to change Frank Goldberg to his current name which is Frank Gehry. By 1966, He and Snyder got divorced.

In 1975, He married Berta Isabel Aguilera, which was his current wife. He has two daughters from his first marriage and two sons from his second marriage. Since that time he has designed public and private buildings in America, Japan and Europe. Having grown up in Canada, Gehry is a huge fan of hockey. He began a hockey league in his office, FOG (which stands for Frank Owen Gehry).

In 2005, veteran film director Sydney Pollack, a friend of Gehry's,

In 2004, he designed the trophy for the World Cup of Hockey. Gehry holds dual citizenship in Canada and United States. He Lives in Santa Monica, California and continues to practice out in Los Angeles.

made the documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry with appreciative comments by Philip Johnson, Ed Ruscha, Julian Schnabel, and Dennis Hopper, and critical ones by Hal Foster supplementing dialogue between Gehry and Pollack about their work in two collaborative art forms with considerable commercial constraints and photography of some buildings Gehry designed. It was released on DVD by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment on August 22, 2006, together with an interview of Sydney Pollack by fellow director Alexander Payne and some audience questions following the premiere of the film. PROMINENT WORKS THE GEHRYs RESIDENCE Location: Santa Monica California Date 1978 Construction Chain Link Gehry and his wife bought this existing house in Santa Monica, California. Gehry however, knew that he had something to be done to the house before they moved in. Soon, He transformed it into a symbol of Deconstructivism. The Construction: System: Light Wood Frame, Corrugated Metal, established: completed

Gehrys work had earned him several of the most significant awards in the Architectural field including Pritzker Architectural Prize which was given at Tdai-ji Buddhist Temple in 1989.

The Pritzker Prize serves to honor a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision, and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.

Some of his award were - AIA Gold Medal, - National Medal of Arts - Order of Canada

ARCHITECTURAL STYLE

Much of Gehry's work falls within the style of Deconstructivism or also known as DeCon Architecture Deconstructivism, It is characterized by ideas of fragmentation, an interest in manipulating ideas of a structure's surface or skin, non-rectilinear shapes which serve to distort and dislocate some of the elements of architecture, such as structure and envelope.

It constricts 'rules' of modernism such as "form follows function," "purity of form," and "truth to materials.

The Original house was a small, 2 storey cottage covered by shingle By wrapping the perimeter of the lot with construction materials and leaving the original house as it was, Gehry created a new space between the lot lines and the old house Low aqua concrete walls were used to build new spaces as

In spite of changes Gehry's design over the years, his approach to a building as a sculpture retains. Gehry has undergone a marked evolution from the plywood and corrugated metal vernacular of his early works to the distorted but pristine concrete of his work.

kitchen and dining

Wooden plank walls were build in the backyard A new roof was added to the additional spaces created. Chain link fencing was used to enclose the floor added Glass cubes were placed over the kitchen and dining to throw in light

Location: East Bank, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis Date established: completed by Frank Gehry around 1993 Construction System: Fabricated Stainless Steel skin and brick

Located on the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus in GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM Location: Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain Date established: October 18, 1997 Construction System: Steel Frame, Titanium sheathing The Guggenheim is one of several museums belonging to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. The museum features permanent and visiting exhibits of works by Spanish and international artists. One of the most admired works of contemporary architecture, the building has been hailed as a "signal moment in the architectural culture" because it represents "one of those rare moments when critics, academics, and the general public were all completely united about something." 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 Nervin upon which the museum sits. VITRA DESIGN MUSEUM Construction System: Concrete panels, wood with unique forms Date established: Completed in 1996 Location: Prague, Czech Republic DANCING HOUSE Minneapolis has been a teaching museum for the university since 1934. It has an overlook view of the Mississippi River at the east end of the Washington Avenue Bridge. The museum is named for Frederick R. Weisman, a Minneapolis native who became well known as an art collector in Los Angeles. He died in 1994. There is another Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art on the campus of Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. The building presents two faces, depending on which side it is viewed from. From the campus side, it presents a brick facade that blends with the existing brick and sandstone buildings. On the opposite side, the museum is a playground of curving and angular brushed steel sheets.

Location: Germany

Weil

am

Rhein,

originally occupied by a house

inthe 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 White neighboring house (with a small globe on the roof) was co-owned by Czech ex-president Vaclav Havel, who lived there from his childhood untilthe mid-1990s. He ordered the first architectural study from Vlado Milunic (who has been involved in re-building Havel's appartment System:

Date established: 1989 Construction plaster and Titanium-zinc alloy

The museum building, an architectural attraction in its own right, was Frank O. Gehry's first building in Europe, realised in cooperation with the Lrrach architect Gnter Pfeifer. Together with the museum, which was originally just designed to house Rolf Fehlbaum's private collection, Gehry also built a more functional-looking production hall and a gatehouse for the close-by Vitra factory. Although Gehry used his trademark sculptural deconstructivist style for the museum building, he did not opt for his usual mix of materials, but limited himself to white plaster and a titanium-zinc alloy. For the first time, he allowed curved forms to break up his more usual angular shapes. The sloping white forms appear to echo the Notre Dame du Haut chapel by Le Corbusier in Ronchamp, France, not far from Weil. Architecture critic Paul Heyer described the general impression on the visitor as ... a continuous changing swirl of white forms on the exterior, each seemingly without apparent relationship to the other, with its interiors a dynamically powerful interplay, in turn directly expressive of the exterior convolutions. As a totality it resolves itself into an entwined coherent display...

in the neighboring house). Afterwards the Dutch bank ING agreed to build a house there, and asked Milunic to invite a world-renowned architect. Milunic first asked Jean Nouvel, who rejected the invitation because of the small size of the site(491 square meters); he then asked Frank Gehry, who and he accepted the challenge. Gehry had an almost unlimited budget, because ING wanted to create an icon in Prague. The construction started in 1994 and the housewas finished in 1996. It reflects a woman and man (Ginger Rogers and Fred Astair) dancing together. In 2005 the Czech National Bank issued a gold coin with the motif of the Dancing House, as the final coin of the series "10 Centuries of Architecture."

WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL WEISMAN ART MUSEUM

Location : 111 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, California Date established: completed in 1993 Construction System: Fabricated Stainless Steel skin The Frank Gehry-designed building opened on October 23, 2003. Both the architecture by Frank Gehry and the acoustics of the concert hall (designed by Yasuhisa Toyota) were praised in contrast to its predecessor, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. As construction finished in the spring of 2003, the Philharmonic postponed its grand opening until the fall and used the summer to let the orchestra and Master Chorale adjust to the new hall. Performers and critics agree that this extra time taken was well worth it by the time the hall opened to the public. The walls and ceiling of the hall are finished with Douglasfir while the floor is finished with oak. REFLECTION PROBLEMS

Huntington was added to the list of diseases the new center would study and treat (Gehrys good friend Milton Wexler milton wexler, saw a wife and

three sisters-in-law succumb to huntington's disease. )

Comprises two wings connected by an open courtyard: a dedicated research center, located at the northern end of the building, end. and the the and a four research for-hire storey space, event space, dubbed the life activity center, located at the southern rooms clinic to the north, which holds medical offices, patient is relatively straightforward consisting of a collection of stacked boxes in white stucco and glass.

SOURCES: Internet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_gehry http://www.matthewstraubdesign.com/483e_web/project04/Fra nko/bio.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guggenheim_Museum_Bilbao http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney_Concert_Hall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weisman_Art_Museum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_House http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAC_Building http://www.archdaily.com/67321/gehry-residence-frank-gehry/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitra_Design_Museum http://www.archdaily.com/65609/center-for-brain-health/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Ruvo_Center_for_Brain_Healt

The reflective qualities of the surface were amplified by the concave sections of the Founders Room walls. Some residents of the neighboring condominiums suffered glare caused by sunlight that was reflected off these surfaces and concentrated in a manner similar to a parabolic mirror. So, the neighbouring buildings complaint about that , the owners asked Gehry Partners to come up with a solution. Their response was a computer analysis of the building's surfaces identifying the offending panels. In 2005 these were dulled by lightly sanding the panels to eliminate unwanted glare.

IAC BUILDING Location : Chelsea,

h Video: SKETCHES OF FRANK GEHRY, SYDNEY POLLACK, Sony Pictures Classic

Manhattan, New York City Date established: completed in 2007 Construction System: Curtain Wall Faade InterActiveCorp's headquarters, it houses the offices of IAC corporation. Reminiscent of several Gehry designs, it appears at a gross level to consist of two major levels: A large base of twisted tower-sections packed together like the cells of a bee hive, with a second bundle of lesser diameter sitting on top of the first. The cell units have the appearance of sails skinned over the skeleton of the building. The overall impression is of two very tall stories, which belies its actual 10-story structure. LOU RUVO CENTER FOR BRAIN HEALTH Location: Nevada, USA Date established: May 21, 2010 Construction Fabricated Stainless Steel skin It was Frank Gehrys Latest Project which cost around System: Las Vegas,

$100 million
For years, many felt Gehrys signature style would be a perfect match for Vegas decked out architecture, yet the starchitect has continually declined offers. However, this request to design a research facilitiy was quite different; Gehry agreed to design the center only if