Frank Gehry's Architecture
Part I
From
Los Angeles to Bilbao
1962-1997
Each
location has a “link”
associated with it, which will open a
marker on the
Google-Earth Map.
For this to work you have to install free
Google-Earth
on
you hard disk.
Frank
Gehry (72) relaxing in his signature cardboard furniture at the
height of his career (2001)
Photo Tim
Street-Porter/Beateworks/Corbis
l'Enfant Terrible of American Architecture
Frank
Owen Gehry, born Ephraim Owen Goldberg, was born February 28,1929 in
Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
In 1947 Gehry moved to California, got a
job driving a delivery truck while studying at Los Angeles City
College, and eventually graduated from University of Southern
California’s Architect school in 1954. After college he had
numerous jobs including service in the United States Army. He then
studied city planning at Harvard Graduate School of Design, and left
after a year, without completing the program. In 1952, still known as
Frank Goldberg, he married Anita Snyder, who he claims was the one
who told him to change his name, which he did, to Frank Gehry. In
1966 he divorced Snyder. In 1975 he married Berta Isabel Aguilera,
his current wife. He has two daughters from his first marriage, and
two sons from his second marriage. Text: Aaron
Kirman
By 2000 Frank Gehry had become one of the most celebrated and sought-after architects in the world. In 1989, he had been honoured with the Pritzker Prize for Architecture. Fourteen honorary doctorates had been bestowed on him. His Guggenheim Museum in Balbao (1995) had not only become the acclaimed building for the 21st-century but also an unqualified financial success for the owners. The town of Bilbao, an industrial nonentity in the Basque Country had suddenly turned into the tourist destination of Northern Spain.
It had not been always that way. Thirty years earlier he, an unknown, had peddled his cardboard furniture to a perplexed world. His private residence (1978), a shack-like reconstruction under corrugated zink-cladding wrapped with chicken-wire fence, had jarred the burghers of its plush, middle-class neighborhood in Santa Monica, CA. The architecture critics thought it was a joke and labled him the King of Deconstructivism. Which an angered Gehry denied. He ermphasized that his style was a manifestation of our chaotic times. He let himself be persuaded to design a social housing project in Frankfurt, Germany (1994); which ironiously led to a number of odd-shaped projects in Central Europe. Still, a critic called his "Dancing House"; in Prague (1995) a "crushed-coke bottle".
Gehry's fame spread. He built a number of "serious" commissions, in which he developed the sculptural stainless-steel cladding that would become his signature architectural style. Most notably the Frederick Weisman Museum in Mineapolis (1993) and the American Center in Paris, France (1994) which directly lead to the Bilbao Guggenheim Museum and the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.
All during this period of increased building activity, Gehry labored at the design of the Walt Disney Philharmonic Hall. It took 16 years (1987-2006) to bring this project to completion. He started with a lime-stone faced design (like the one at the American Center in Paris) which turned out too costly. Gehry exchanged the limestone for stainless-steel. Still the financing client remained unmoved. Eventually in 1996, the success of Bilbao and Eli Broad of Los Angeles helped to turn the embarrassing funding impasse around. The building was inaugurated in 2003; acoustically perhaps the best concert hall in the world.
Since then Gehry has been booked for the rest of his life: a revolutionary sky-scraper, the Beekman Tower in Manhattan, a badly needed 3-billion-dollar redevelopment of Garnd Avenue in Los Angeles, another Guggenheim Museum in of all places Abu Dabhi, United Arab Emirates to be completed on Gehry's 83rd birthday in 2012.
Frank
Gehry Partners, LLP, 1962-present
Los
Angeles, CA 90066, 12541 Beatrice St
In 1962 together with Brian Aamoth, Terry Bell, John Bowers, Edwin Chan, Berta Gehry, Tensho Takemori, Laurence Tighe, and Craig Webb, Gehry founded Gehry Partners, LLP
Building
a "sketch model" at Gehry Partners' Studio
Photo Thomas
Mayer
Every
project undertaken by Gehry Partners is designed personally and
directly by Frank Gehry. All of the resources of the firm and the
extensive experience of the firm’s partners are available to
assist in the design effort and to carry this effort forward through
technical development and construction administration. The firm
relies on the use of Digital Project, a sophisticated 3D computer
modeling program originally created for use by the aerospace
industry, to thoroughly document designs and to rationalize the
bidding, fabrication, and construction processes.
For a
collection of models of his projects see ARCSPACE.com,
and an extensive photographic documentation at his studio see Thomas
Mayer.
Gehry
Residence 1971-78
Santa
Monica, California, Washington Avenue and 22nd St
Gehry's
original house with its chicken wire fences and its corrugated zink
cladding,1972
Photo pixelcreations.fr
Before Frank Gehry acquired
international prestige as the architect of the Guggenheim Museum in
Bilbao, he “designed” his own house in Santa Monica
(1971-78). The story starts when his wife, Berta, bought a small pink
bungalow in a bourgeois neighbourhood. Gehry decided to redesign what
he considered "a dumb little house with charm", to build
around it and try "to make it more important". The result
was so emotive among their neighbours that the new house was even
shot at one night! Hence the chicken wire fencing.
Gehry has been
called ‘the apostle of chain-link fencing and corrugated metal
siding‘ (B. Adams). The appearance of the house, with blurred
edges between old and new finishes, gives the appearance of being in
a ongoing building process. "We are in a culture made up of fast
food and advertising and throw-away and running for airplanes and
catching cabs - frenetic. So, I think that those possibilities are
more expressive of our culture than something finished."
The
house after the chicken wire fence had come down 1978
Photo
wikipedia
The
Interior
Photo blogspot
One night Arthur Drexler, the then director of the Department of Architecture at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, was invited to dinner at Gehry´s house. He asked whether the peeled paint on the walls was intentional or not. At the end of the evening, Berta confessed to her husband that the guest had "thought the house was a joke". At that moment Gehry knew that his search had been successful.
When
Berta and Frank first built the house, they had only one child. Later
they had a second one. The children grew and they soon needed their
own rooms. There have been many later additions, like the small
swimming pool that Gehry had started dreaming of, or the conversion
of the garage into a guesthouse for two daughters from his previous
marriage who often visited.
With these recent renovations "I
lost the old house!", Gehry acknowledges, referring not to the
bungalow but what had been the revamped house in 1978. Text blogspot
Merriweather
Post Pavilion Music Center, 1967-1974
Columbia,
Maryland
The
Music Pavilion
Photo blogspot
Harper
House 1977
Baltimore,
Maryland
The
Luxury Apartment Complex
Photo mitula.net
One of Gehry's early, forgettable, most conventional buildings. It also leaked badly and the outside brick sheathing had to be repaired.
Loyola
Law School, 1978-2002
Los
Angeles, California, (various buildings)
Charles
S. Casassa Building
Photo Mary-Ann
Sullivan
Established in 1920, Loyola Law School
is among the first law schools established in Southern California.
When Loyola chose Gehry to construct its new campus in 1978, he was a
relative unknown. Loyola at the time was a law school with only one
building--what is now the William M. Rains Library. Gehry transformed
the Loyola campus into a series of contemporary buildings clustered
around a central plaza.
Casassa houses part of the legal library,
the campus bookstore, several classrooms and administrative offices.
The Center for Conflict Resolution and the Center for Juvenile Law
and Policy are also there. Casassa's most striking features are its
orange façade, and, protruding from the façade, a metal
structure that resembles a castle drawbridge.
Santa
Monica Place, 1980
Santa
Monica, California
Santa
Monica Place Shopping Mall 2008 a few months before it was put to the
wrecking ball
Air
and Space Exhibit, 1982-1984
Los
Angeles, California Museum of Science and Industry
The
south side
Located
in a park with museums, a sports arena, coliseum, and other buildings
in a variety of architectural styles, the Aerospace museum is also
attached on the north side to an old classically influenced Armory
(which comprises the majority of the interior space). This
post-modern facade is made up of an arrangement of diverse sculptural
components: a large metal-skinned polygon, a glass wall with a
windowed prism above it, and a plain stucco cube with a hangar door.
Text and photo Mary
Sullivan
Edgemar
Retail Complex, 1984
Santa
Monica, California,
The
courtyard
Chain
link fence wrapping
Not
everybody is happy with Gehry - Quote: "I was struck by how
institutional and cold it looked and felt. For a neighborhood known
for its friendly and relaxed architecture, Gehry really made an
effort to create an impersonal-seeming shopping/cultural complex. The
most bizarre detail was the chain-like fence that wrapped around one
tower like an external skin.
The complex was groundbreaking in
that it retained some of the site’s memory as a dairy factory,
but I always found that point rather academic...."
Photos
and commentary Hrag
Vartanian
Frances
H. Goldwyn Hollywood Regional Library,1985
Hollywood,
California,
View
from the street
Photo flickr
Named for the mother of Samuel Goldwyn, Jr. (the son of the movie mogul), this structure is more symmetrical than the usual Gehry work. The steel-gated entrance is at the center of the tall building, while the reading rooms are in the second story of each side unit of the structure.
Chiat/Day
Building, 1985-1991
Venice,
California
The
Chiat/Day building.
Photo wikimapia
The binoculars were designed by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen.The Chiat/Day Building is a commercial office building located in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. Built between 1985-1991 for advertising agency Chiat/Day (now TBWA\Chiat\Day) as its West Coast Corporate Headquarters.
Advanced
Technology Laboratories (ATL), University of Iowa, 1987-1992
Iowa
City
View
from across the Iowa river
The University of Iowa's Advanced Technology Laboratories (ATL) represents one of Gehry's earlier experiments with stainless steel cladding, giving a glimpse of his future masterpieces in Bilbao and Los Angeles. It is a multi-disciplinary building that occupies a site adjacent to the Iowa River.
Disney Hall's First Design
Walt
Disney Philharmonic Hall, 1987-1996 + 1999-2003
Los
Angeles
The protracted 16-year history of the Project 1987-2003
The Walt Disney Concert Hall project
was launched in 1987, when Lillian Disney, Walt's widow, donated $50
million. Frank Gehry delivered completed designs in 1991. To saitsfy
Lilian's stipulation and secure a contibution by the City of Los
Angeles, construction of the underground parking garage began in 1992
and was completed by 1996. The block of the garage stood around -
unused - for 4 years.
Construction of the concert hall itself was
stalled from 1994 to 1996 due to lack of funds. Hollywood was not
interested to contribute to Lillian Disney's project.
Gehry
revised the plans, and replaced the original lime-stone sheathing
with a less costly stainless steel skin. When new delays forestalled
work, Gehry threatened to resign from the unfinished project. But who
could complete it?
In 1996 Bilbao was nearing completion, which
greatly helped restart the fundraising. In 1996 Eli Broad and
then-mayor Richard Riordan took the funding campaign into hand.
Groundbreaking for the hall itself was held in December 1999.
Upon
completion in 2003, the project had cost an estimated $274 million,
which came entirely from private donations. The Disney family's
contribution in addition to Liliian's original gift (who had
meanwhile died in 1997) was estimated at $84.5 million, another $25
million were contributed by The Walt Disney Corporation.
Vitra
Design Museum, 1989
Weil
am Rhein, Germany
The
museum from its sober frontal angle.
Photos wikipedia
A
more photogenic view from the back.
The museum's collection, focusing on furniture and interior design, is centered around the bequest of U.S. designers Charles and Ray Eames, as well as numerous works of designers such as George Nelson, Alvar Aalto, Verner Panton, Dieter Rams, Jean Prouvé, Richard Hutten and Michael Thonet. It is one of the world's largest collections of modern furniture design, including pieces representative of all major periods and styles from the beginning of the nineteenth century onwards. (Wikipedia)
Disney
Village 1992
Disney Land Paris, Seine et Marne, France
Disney
Village, France at Christmas
Photo Rainer
Kalinowski
Disney Village is a shopping, dining
and entertainment complex in Disneyland Resort Paris,
Marne-la-Vallée, France. Originally named Festival Disney, it
opened April 12, 1992 with what was then called the Euro Disney
Resort and originally covered an area of approximately 18,000 m².
It was designed by architect Frank Gehry with towers of oxidised
silver and bronze-coloured stainless steel columns and a canopy of
lights.
Center
for the Visual Arts, University of Toledo, 1993
Toledo,
Ohio
The
center in close proximity of the Toledo Museum of Art.
The
lead clad
exterior of the Buildings from the
rear.
Photos Mary
Sullivan, bluffton.edu
The new Arts Building is physically connected with the neo-classical white marble Toledo Museum of Art, although it is difficult to see any contextual relationship. Like most of Gehry's works, this building is a fractured composition, broken into discrete volumes with rising and descending forms. The metalic facade is made of lead-coated copper, giving a fortress-like appearance to the side and rear of the building. (Wikipedia)
Frederick
Weisman Museum of Art, University of Minnesota, 1993
Minneapolis,
WI
The
museum from the bridge (Photo Wikipedia)
The
museum from the southwest.
Photo and text Mary
Sullivan, bluffton.edu
This is the first art museum designed by Gehry in its entirety - four years before Bilbao. Named for a Los Angeles businessman, art collector, philanthropist, and University of Minnesota alumnus, this building is perched on a bank overlooking the Mississippi with a view as well of downtown Minneapolis. The jagged angles echo the rocky bluffs of the Mississippi below. The irregularly placed windows offer snapshot views from the inside of the river and the the city.
American
Center, Paris, 1994
(currently
Cinémathèque Française)
Paris,
France
The
center
Photo Wikipedia
The
limestone cladding which did not make it to Disney Hall in Los
Angeles.
Site restrictions in some ways make
this building atypical of Gehry's mature work--at least on two sides,
where it follows the logic of Haussmann town-planning and observes
the street line of adjacent buildings. Only on the sides facing the
park was Gehry able to create the kind of sculptural forms
characteristic of his later works. Similarly, the limestone and zinc
pay hommage to the urban context and again differ from his
titanium-clad buildings like the Guggenheim in Bilbao.
Photo 2
and Text from Mary
Sullivan, bluffton.edu
Siedlung
Goldstein(1994)
Frankfurt/
Main, Germany
A
162-Flats public housing project
Photo Thomas
Mayer
The Goldstein Siedlung a public,
rent-controlled housing project with an artistic touch. Originally a
government project (1930) (Sozialbau) for unemployed workers
surrounding the former castle (14th cent) of the rebellious Grafen
von Goldstein (not Jewish!). During WWIl it was a Nazi-party
stronghold. Since the 1950s it boasts a Social-Democratic majority
(11 000 inhabitants). - Gehry's contribution is situated on the last
undeveloped part of the original government owned property.
Text
from various German websites.
Energie
Forum Innovation, 1995
Bad Oeynhausen,
Germany
Entry
side of the forum.
Photo Energy
Forum Website.de
Aerial
view
Photo Thomas
Mayer
After his "deconstructive" beginnings in the eighties and nineties, Frank Gehry increasingly practised a very plastic form of architecture. His expressively sculptural cultural buildings, the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, his project for the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and above all the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, have shaped the architectural awareness of our period and provided exemplary artistic alternatives to the architectural canon of Modernism
"Fred
& Ginger's Dancing House", 1995
Prague, Czech
Republic
The
Dancing House in Prague
Photo Fino
Filka, flickr.com
Californian architect Frank O. Gehry
and his Czech co-architect Vladimir Milunic have designed an
impressive building to fill a space left empty in the centre of
Prague after the bombings of World War II. It is a 'dancing building'
and was named "Ginger & Fred" in an allusion to the
American film icons. The building is part of the tradition of
deconstructive architecture (also known as catastrophe architecture):
Gehry's postmodern signature is undeniably visible - and stands in
marked contrast to the building's historic setting. It is thus
perceived by many people to be an alien element, a Californian
eye-sore in one of the few central-European cities not reduced to
rubble and ashes at the end of World War II. Some say "Ginger &
Fred" repeats the destruction of the cityscape on this site,
where American bombs (accidentally) destroyed a building at the end
of the war.
Wilfried Dechau, editor of Deutsche Bauzeitung, states
that the building reminds him of a 'crushed can of Coke.' He clearly
thinks that Gehry should not have marked this corner of Prague with
his 'scent,' for 'this gap torn by American bombs at the end of the
war should have been closed with utmost formal restraint in order to
preserve (at least from the outside) the homogeneous impression of
this street.'
Other critics, for instance Simonetta Carbonaro,
call the building a 'Dancing Palace,' 'a new jewel in the city's
architecture....'
Text by Josef Pesch reprinted in a Dutch
architectural webpage lava.ds.arch.tue.nl
Anaheim
ICE (formerly Disney ICE), 1995
Anaheim,
California,
Disney
ICE
Commissioned by Disney's then-CEO Michael Eisner, the facility resembles a pair of huge quonset huts, and has a wooden interior with laminated beams and braces, producing "a nautical effect that recalls the inverted ship shape of Gehry's Disney Concert Hall". It opened in 1995 (From Wikipedia)
Team
Disney Administration Headquarters, 1995
Anaheim,
California
TDA
Headquarters
Photo mathewstraub
Team Disney Anaheim , California, is the administrative headquarters of the Disneyland Resort. It houses the offices of resort President Ed Grier. The building occupies the former site of the Global Van Lines headquarters. Disney purchased the property in the 1990s and the 1950s-era Global building was razed. Its replacement, designed by architect Frank Gehry, opened in 1995
Bilbao Museum Guggenheim
1997
Bilbao,
Spain
Gehry's Architectural Breakthrough at Age 68.
Night
view
Photo Bilbao website.
View
from the river Nervión
Photo Wikipedia
Detail
from the east
Photo Mary
Sullyvan, bloffton.edu
Instantly hailed as the most important
structure of its time. On October 19, 2007 Frank Gehry’s
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao celebrated a decade of extraordinary
success. With close to ninety exhibitions and over ten million
visitors to its credit, the Museum Bilbao forever changed the way the
world thinks about museums, and it continues to challenge our
assumptions about the connections between art, architecture, and
collecting. Architect Philip Johnson called it "the greatest
building of our time"
The museum's design and construction
serve as an object lesson in Gehry's style and method. Like much of
Gehry's other works, the structure consists of radically sculpted,
organic contours. Sited as it is in a port town, it is intended to
resemble a ship.
Computer simulations of the building's structure made it feasible to build shapes that architects of earlier eras would have found nearly impossible to construct. It is also important to note that while the museum is a spectacular monument from the river, at street level it is quite modest and does not overwhelm its traditional surroundings. The building was constructed on time and budget, which is rare for architecture of this type.
The building's site is challenging, fronted on one side with a freight yard (the stacked up shipping containers creating serendipitous minimalist sculptures, as if emulating their upscale neighbor) and with a heavily trafficked bridge crossing the northern sector. The highrise tower, that first glimpse of the museum from afar, is intended by Gehry to balance and to integrate the preexisting bridge itself into the overall composition of the building.
Gehry has also creatively used the waterfront setting. Building out over the water and using a combination of water-filled pools and the river itself, he clouds the boundaries of both, again finding a flow between building and site. But it is more complicated than that, for from some viewpoints inside, the water feels like a protective moat, adding yet another layer of perceptions. The towering glass sheathing of the central atrium achieves a parallel result, integrating interior and exterior, while the space provides the fulcrum for the surrounding galleries, the stem from which the petals grow. Text partially from Arthur Lazere in culturevulture.net with contributions from Bilbao's website