Frank Owen Gehry (born Frank Owen Goldberg; February 28, 1929) is a Canadian-American Pritzker Prize winning architect based in Los Angeles.

Known for his sculptural and organic designs, he is a among the most coveted architects of Deconstructivism.

In 1989, Gehry was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize.

“If I knew where I was going, I wouldn’t do it. When I can predict or plan it, I just don’t do it.”

[Frank Gehry]

“I was a truck driver in L.A., going to City College, and I tried radio announcing, which I wasn’t very good at. I tried chemical engineering, which I wasn’t very good at and didn’t like, and then I remembered. You know, somehow I just started racking my brain about, “What do I like?” Where was I? What made me excited? And I remembered art, that I loved going to museums and I loved looking at paintings, loved listening to music. Those things came from my mother, who took me to concerts and museums. I remembered Grandma and the blocks, and just on a hunch, I tried some architecture classes.”

Gehry is the sole architect to have been included in the popular tv show “the Simpsons”, for his unconventional and controversial style.

“Gehry’s work is a highly refined, sophisticated and adventurous aesthetic that emphasizes the art of architecture. Always open to experimentation, he has as well a sureness and maturity that resists, in the same way that Picasso did, being bound either by critical acceptance or his successes. His buildings are juxtaposed collages of spaces and materials that make users appreciative of both the theatre and the back-stage, simultaneously revealed.”

[from the 1989 Pritzker jury citation]

“Sketches of Frank Gehry” | directed by Sydney Pollack

Frank Gehry’s Work

Gehry Residence – Santa Monica

Vitra design museum – Weil am Rhein

Olympic fish – Barcelona

Weisman art museum – Minneapolis

Cinémathèque Française – Paris

Guggenheim – Bilbao

Neuer Zollhof – Dusseldorf

DZ Bank building – Berlin

EMP museum – Seattle

Gehry Tower – Hanover

Weatherhead school of management – Cleveland

Maggie’s centre – Dundee

Walt Disney concert hall – Los Angeles

Ray and Maria Stata Center – Cambridge, MA

Jay Pritzker pavilion – Chicago

MARTa – Herford

IAC building | Manhattan

Art Gallery of Ontario | Toronto

Novartis campus – Basel

Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health | Las Vegas

ew York by Gehry (Beekman Tower) – Manhattan

Biomuseo “Bridge of life” – Panama City

Louis Vuitton Foundation | Paris

Dr. Chau Chak Wing building | Sydney

Frank Gehry’s projects on Archiscapes

“I approach each project with a new insecurity, almost like the first project I ever did, and I get the sweats, I go in and start working, I’m not sure where I’m going.”

[Frank Gehry]