Gehry, Frank
Identification Canadian-born American architect
Born February 28, 1929; Toronto, Ontario,
Canada
In the 1990’s, Gehr y challenged the limits of architecture by
creating buildings that some called works of art, others
abominations.
Frank Gehry, born Ephraim Owen Goldberg, left
Canada in 1947 to create a life for himself in South-
ern California. Once settled in Los Angeles, Gehry
drove a delivery truck while attending Los Angeles
City College. A bright and ambitious student, Gehry
soon transferred, and he graduated from the Uni-
versity of Southern California’s School of Architec-
ture in 1954. After one year in the U.S. Army, he
continued his education at the Harvard Gradu-
ate School of Design, where he studied urban plan-
ning.
Throughout the 1960’s, Gehry worked for suc-
cessful architecture firms, including Pereira and
Luckman, Victor Gruen Associates, and André
Remondet. In 1967, Gehry branched out on his
own, starting Frank O. Gehry and Associates. His
early projects were traditional commercial buildings
and private residences. He experimented with mate-
rials and design in his own residence located in Ven-
ice, California, which would become his signature.
By the 1970’s, Gehry began experimenting with ma-
terials such as chain-link fencing and corrugated
steel in his commissions, including the Cabrillo Ma-
rine Museum, in San Pedro, California (1979),
whose twenty thousand square feet were “laced to-
gether” in what Gehry termed a “shadow structure,”
and the Santa Monica Place (1980) shopping mall in
Santa Monica, California, where he draped a three-
hundred-foot-long, six-story-tall wall made out of
chain-link fencing with another layer of colored
chain-link spelling out its name.
Never subscribing to one established movement,
Gehry has been praised for his abilities to juxtapose
raw, harsh materials against simple and fluid geo-
metric shapes. In doing so, he created his “warped
style,” which is epitomized in his Guggenheim Mu-
seum Bilbao (1997), in Bilbao, Spain. The structure
calls upon Gehry’s talent of sculpting, rather than
erecting, a building, bringing the intimacy of paint-
ing into architecture and allowing the individual to
have as equal a relationship with the open space sur-
rounding the building as with the building itself.
The museum is fluid with flowing and sumptuous
waves of walls that lack ninety-degree angles. The
building was Gehry’s greatest achievement during
the 1990’s, paving his way for future projects and so-
lidifying his place as a premier experimental archi-
tect of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.Impact Gehry’s introduction of new materials,
forms, and ideas to architecture has caused Ameri-
can architecture to be viewed as experimental and
progressive worldwide. His buildings not only allow
academia to discuss form, function, and design but
also open the conversation of architecture’s purpose
to the masses. Gehry has been recognized by his
peers for his achievements and contributions and
has received numerous honorary doctorates. Gehry
has taught architecture at America’s top universities,
including Columbia University in New York.356 Gehry, Frank The Nineties in America
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, designed by Frank Gehry, is
reflected in the Nervión River in northern Spain.(AP/Wide
World Photos)