FRANK OWEN GEHRY__

from The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition |2008|  

another sketch of GEHRY

Frank Owen Gehry , 1929-, American architect, b. Toronto, Canada as Frank Owen Goldberg. He is widely considered one of the finest and most artful of contemporary architects. In 1947, Gehry's family moved to Los Angeles, where he attended the Univ. of California; he later studied at Harvard. He has been acclaimed for his original, sophisticated, adventurous, and very American buildings. Extremely varied and lively, his structures contrast space and materials; often jutting, unusual shapes are juxtaposed with simple geometric forms. In his earlier work these forms are expressed in a wide range of usual and unusual architectural materials (e.g., raw plywood, corrugated aluminum, and exposed pipe) that sometimes give these buildings a deliberately unfinished quality. Among his many important commissions are the Loyola Law School (1981-84), Walt Disney Concert Hall (1989), and the Team Disneyland Building (1995), Los Angeles; "Gehry's Fish" (1992), Barcelona; the Weisman Museum of Art (1993), Minneapolis, the first of his all metal-clad buildings; and the Cinémathèque Français (the former American Center. 1994), Paris.

FRANK OWEN GEHRY_

american DECADES

Background

Born in Toronto, Canada, Frank O. Gehry came to the forefront of architecture well before the 1990s. He studied at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles (1949-1951) and at Harvard University (1956—1957). The principal of Gehry and Associates, Los Angeles, since 1962, he received the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 1989. When he accepted the award, he spoke about establishing a link between art and architecture that would influence his work for the next decade: "I explored the process of new construction materials to try giving feeling and spirit to form. In trying to find the essence of my own expression, I fantasized that I was an artist standing before a white canvas deciding what the first move should be."

FRANK OWEN GEHRY

Frank O. Gehry (Frank O. Goldberg; born 1929) was an American architect whose sculptured designs and use of vernacular materials won him somewhat belated but widespread recognition.