Architect
Frank Gehry
Frank Gehry
Canadian
American
architect and
designer whose
original,
sculptural,
often
audacious work
won him world
wide renown
Biography
• Born in Toronto, Canada in 1929
• Bachelor of Architecture from
University of Southern California
• Graduate work in City Planning at
Harvard University
• He became famous in the 1970s for creating his
style of furniture
• Frank O. Gehry is one of the most sought-after
international furniture designers
• Frank Gehry uses everyday materials such as
corrugated iron, plaster and wickerwork to
produce his furniture designs
Architectural style
• Much of Gehry's work falls within the style of
Deconstructivism
• Santa Monica residence is a commonly cited example of
deconstructivist architecture, as it was so drastically
divorced from its original context, and, in such a manner, as
to subvert its original spatial intention.
• Gehry’s style at times seems unfinished or even crude
• featured the use of inexpensive found objects and nontraditional media such as clay to make serious art.
• Gehry has been called the apostle of chain-link fencing and
corrugated metal siding
• he is also a sophisticated classical artist, who knows European
art history and contemporary sculpture and painting.
Works Include…
• Art Gallery of Ontario
Chiat/Day Building
Dancing House (Prague)
Gehry Residence
Gehry Tower (Hanover)
Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao
Fish Dance Restaurant, Kobe
Walt Disney Concert Hall
Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art
A Gehry building begins with a sketch,
and Gehry’s sketches are distinctive.
They’re characterized by a sense of offhand improvisation, of intuitive
spontaneity. The fine line is invariably
fluid, impulsive. The drawings convey no
architectural mass or weight, only loose
directions and shifting spatial
relationships.
"As soon as I understand the scale of the building and the
relationship to the site and the relationship to the client, as
it becomes more and more clear to me, I start doing
sketches".
-GEHRY
Walt Disney Concert Hall, New York (2003)
Initial idea in sketch
Completed building
Walt Disney Concert Hall, New York (2003)
Completed building
Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (1997)
Initial idea in sketch
Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (1997)
Completed building
The Architecture of Frank Gehry
• Early work showed signs
of becoming
unconventional
• The Steeves House is
the first project he did
in Southern California
• Completed in 1959
• As time passed Gehry’s
work became more
interesting
• Benson House designed
in 1979
• Some other projects
designed in the ’80’s
• Gehry’s fractured
geometry, and sculptural
buildings have made him
Benson House designed in 1979
one of the most sought
after, cutting edge
Architects of today
Frank Gehry's private home,Santa
Monica, California
• began with a traditional tract
home with clapboard siding and a
gambrel roof
• Gehry gutted the interior and
re-invented the house as a work
of deconstructionist
architecture
• After stripping the interior down
to the beams and rafters, Gehry
wrapped the exterior with what
appears to be scraps and
rubbish: plywood, corrugated
metal, glass, and chain link
• As a result, the old house still
exists inside the envelope of the
new house. The Gehry House was
completed in 1978.
Comparison of Steeves and Gehry
houses
• The Steeves house is crisp,
clear and free of any hint of
quirks. Its spaces, indoors and
out, are airy and
uncomplicated. The details of
the sliding doors, wooden
fascias and stucco panels are
clean, well-finished and
unfussy.
• "my (early) preoccupation with
hierarchical spaces and formal
planning organization."
• Translated from "archibabble,"
this means that the architect
wanted to achieve a logical plan
for the house, then to express
this logic in a straightforward
manner.
Comparison of Steeves and Gehry
houses
• The simple pleasures of clarity
were supplanted by the subtler
delights of ambiguity
• Nets of Gehry's trademark
chain-link fencing and a tilted
skylight over the kitchen add
to the ambiguity of the design.
• All the lines between old and
new, horizontal and vertical,
roof and wall are blurred into
oblivion.
• Internally, the Gehry house is
a deliberately schizoid fusion
of the ordinary and the
incongruous. It's like a live-in
hall of mirrors where the
reflections are alternately
expected and extraordinary
The Architecture of Frank Gehry
• Gehry begins to reject
the Box and his
architecture becomes
more sculptural
Fish Dance Restaurant, Kobe
‘”I guess the work has become a
kind of sculpture as
architecture.It started with
the Barcelona fish.And again
that was intuitive ..I started
drawing fish.And then they
started to have a life of their
own..though I’ m a strict
modernist in the sense of
believing in purity , that you
shouldn’t decorate.And yet
buildings need decoration
because they need scaling
elements.They cant just be
faceless things”
MAJOR PROJECT:Frank Gehry
• Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, 2004
Frank Gehry
• When he gets an idea, he sketches it
• Can you guess what this will look like?
Ta Da!
Walt Disney Concert Hall
Don’t worry!
• He does know how to draw; that was just a
gesture thumbnail.
• This is more like what architectural designs
look like
Disney Concert Hall
Lillian Disney made an initial gift in 1987
to build a performance venue as a gift to
the people of Los Angeles and a tribute
to Walt Disney's devotion to the arts
and to the city
The walls and ceiling of the hall are
finished with Douglas-fir while the floor
is finished with oak
Disney Concert Hall
•designed to be one of the most
acoustically sophisticated concert
halls in the world, providing both
visual and aural intimacy for an
unparalleled musical experience
•From the stainless steel curves of
its striking exterior to the state-ofthe-art acoustics of the hardwoodpaneled main auditorium, the 3.6acre complex embodies the unique
energy and creative spirit of the
city of Los Angeles and its
orchestra.
Reflection
problems
• the Founders Room and Children's Amphitheater were
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designed with highly polished mirror-like panels
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
The resulting heat made some rooms of nearby
condominiums unbearably warm, caused the airconditioning costs of these residents to skyrocket
After complaints from neighboring buildings and
residents, the owners asked Gehry Partners to come up
with a solution
these were dulled by lightly sanding the panels to
eliminate unwanted glare
Awards
• Gehry was elected to the College of Fellows of the
American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 1974, and
he has received many national, regional, and local AIA
awards
• Gehry was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize at
the Tōdai-ji Buddhist Temple in 1989. 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.
• In 1999, he was awarded the AIA Gold Medal "in
recognition of a significant body of work of lasting
influence on the theory and practice of architecture."
Criticism
• Gehry's work has its detractors. Some have
said:
• The buildings waste structural resources by
creating functionless forms.
• The buildings are apparently designed without
accounting for the local climate.
• The spectacle of a building often overwhelms its
intended use, especially in the case of museums
and arenas.
• The buildings do not seem to belong in their
surroundings.
The architects thoughts on
his work
“It seems to me that when you are
doing architecture, you’re building
something out of nothing.There are
social issues,there’s the context
and there’s how do you make the
enclosure and what do you make it
with?I try things on,like I used to
when I was a kid.I do it all the
time…I get to know it.I assimilate
it,and then it comes out some
other way..translated….”
Frank Gehry
He’s so famous that he was even in “The
Simpson's” and “Arthur”, where he played
himself.
THANK YOU !!!