Internationally acclaimed architect Frank Gehry (born 28 February 1929) has been headlining architectural news platforms since he established his Los Angeles practice in 1962 and remodeled his home in Santa Monica. Notorious for his expressive use of form (and its-sometimes inflationary effect on project budgets), Gehry is best known for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, which fellow architect Philip Johnson once dubbed “the greatest building of our time.”
Gehry’s fresh criticality inspires and incites; his career-long commitment to the style of Deconstructivism, demonstrating that form needn’t always express function, has revealed itself in titanium-clad undulating envelopes, perplexing volumes, and aesthetically discordant detailing. To facilitate this signature style, Gehry borrowed software that was intended for the aerospace industry, eventually founding Gehry Technologies, a company which develops cutting-edge design software.
Gehry has also become known for his honest and outspoken tendencies, perhaps most notably displayed at the October 2014 press conference where he gave a reporter the finger and claimed that "98 percent of everything that is built and designed today is pure shit."
But over and above his public persona, Gehry's office continues to provoke professional discourse with innovative architectural projects. Among their more recent international commissions, the Los Angeles-based Gehry Partners has designed the Facebook headquarters in California and in New York City, a residential building for the Battersea Power Station development in London, and another Guggenheim Museum, this time for Abu Dhabi.
Upon awarding him the Pritzker Prize in 1989, the jury said it best: Gehry is “always open to experimentation… being bound neither by critical acceptance or his successes. His buildings are juxtaposed collages of spaces and materials that make users appreciative of both the theater and the backs-stage, simultaneously revealed.”
Check out all of Gehry's works featured on ArchDaily via the thumbnails below, and more coverage of Gehry below those:
Frank Gehry: "I'm Not a Starchitect"
Frank Gehry and Maya Lin Awarded Obama's Presidential Medal of Freedom
Frank Gehry Wins 2014 Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts
Frank Gehry Wins 2016 Annenberg Award
Frank Gehry Claims Today's Architecture is (Mostly) "Pure Shit"
Video: Frank Gehry, Paul Goldberger and Charlie Rose on the Art and Science of Architecture
Frank Gehry Discusses Project Costs on Never-Before-Seen "The Competition" Teaser
The Indicator: Ten Years Later, Has the Disney Concert Hall Made a Difference?
The Unexpected Low-Tech Solutions That Made the Guggenheim Bilbao Possible
The 4 Most Amusing Responses to Frank Gehry's UTS Business School
Frank Gehry Discusses the Design Behind his Recently Completed Concert Hall in Berlin
Mark Zuckerberg Praises Frank Gehry: "He's Very Efficient"
5 Reasons Frank Gehry Might be the Perfect Choice for the LA River Master Plan
"Briefly": a Documentary About Design's Least Significant Piece of Paper
Getty Research Institute Acquires Extensive Frank Gehry Archive
Gehry's Software Enters the Cloud, Promotes Paperless Construction
Frank Gehry to Teach Online Course on Architecture & Design
Frank Gehry's Online Masterclass: A Review By Architecture Students
