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Ever since his wildly dramatic Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, opened in 1997, Frank Gehry has been widely and justifiably considered the leading architect of our time. Although this ascension occurred seemingly overnight, it actually took more than half a century, counting architecture school and work in eight other offices before he opened his own firm in 1962. Since then, Gehry's designs have become increasingly freer and more inventive. He first explored existing design approaches such as Frank Lloyd Wright's, Southern California vernacular, minimalist modernism, and Miesian structuralism before blazing his own trail. This included corrugated cardboard furniture, chain-link fencing, unfinished metal siding, exposed wood studs, and other "cheapskate" materials; skewed geometries; and a recurring preoccupation with fishlike building forms. He learned to fragment buildings into discrete components (often making each room a structure unto itself), experiment with color, create forced perspectives, and, above all, bring natural light indoors masterfully. His recent designs tend to be baroque and romantic in ways never before seen, often resembling sails or abstracted flowers. Gehry's architecture is an art that involves great risk taking, and while not every design succeeds fully, his courage is exemplary and his batting average is surprisingly high.
For readers who truly want to know about Gehry, The Complete Works is indispensable. It documents 250 works, even early ones that other architects might conveniently omit, and the material is well illustrated on 614 oversized pages. Insightful essays by two eminent architectural scholars set the stage for this massive and unrivaled traversal of Gehry's designs. --John Pastier
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Kurzbeschreibung
Los Angeles-based architect Frank Gehry is one of the greatest architects of the 20th century, with his Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain (1997), heralded as one of the most important buildings of our time. Gehry, who was born in Toronto, first gained attention in the early 1970s with several quirky projects - among them the Davis Studio and Residence in Malibu, the renovation of the Hollywood Bowl, and his own residence in Santa Monica - that explored and stretched the idea of modern architecture and established his as a unique voice on the architectural scene. Gehry re-examined perspective and geometry and at the same time became interested in inexpensive, popular materials (corrugated metal, chain link, plywood) and raw finishes. These themes metamorphosed into projects in Los Angeles like the Temporary Contemporary Museum (1982-83) and the Loyola University Law School (principal stages, 1978-early 1980s), and the Indiana Avenue Houses (1979-81) and the Chiat/Day Building (1985-91) in Venice, California. Beginning in the 1990s Gehry has experimented with complex forms and sculptural geometries, and his work includes a group of significant cultural projects, among them the Vitra Design Museum in Germany, the American Centre in Paris, the Frederick R. Weisman Museum at the University of Minnesota, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. This monograph showcases the enormous variety that has always characterized Gehry's work: it includes not only his buildings, but also his fish sculptures, cardboard and bentwood furniture series, many exhibition designs, collaborations with artists, and his earliest projects - those from the late 1950s through the 1960s, most of which have never been published. Incisive essays by the two authors introduce the book and include thought-provoking comparative photographs that place Gehry's work in the context of contemporary architecture and art movements. Following the introductory essays, Gehry's buildings and projects are showcased in chronological order, beginning with his student work of the 1950s and ending with a skyscraper project for Times Square in New York, designed in 1997. Each project is clearly identified, with critical data (client, program, materials) listed as applicable and brief project descriptions for key works.
