Frank Gehry considers the recently commissioned Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles to be his first major project in his hometown. No stranger to music, he has a long association with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, having worked to improve the acoustics of the Hollywood Bowl. He also designed the Concord Amphitheatre in northern California, and yet another much earlier in his career in Columbia, Maryland, the Merriweather Post Pavilion of Music. 

The Museum of Contemporary Art selected him to convert an old warehouse into its Temporary Contemporary (1983) exhibition space while the permanent museum was being built. It has received high praise, and remains in use today. On a much smaller scale, but equally as effective, Gehry remodeled what was once an ice warehouse in Santa Monica, adding some other buildings to the site, into a combination art museum/retail and office complex. 

The belief that "architecture is art" has been a part of Frank Gehry's being for as long as he can remember. In fact, when asked if he had any mentors or idols in the history of architecture, his reply was to pick up a Brancusi photograph on his desk, saying, "Actually, I tend to think more in terms of artists like this. He has had more influence on my work than most architects. In fact, someone suggested that my skyscraper that won a New York competition looked like a Brancusi sculpture. I could name Alvar Aalto from the architecture world as someone for whom I have great respect, and of course, Philip Johnson." 

Born in Canada in 1929, Gehry is today a naturalized U.S. citizen. In 1954, he graduated from the University of Southern California and began working full time with Victor Gruen Associates, where he had been apprenticing part-time while still in school. After a year in the army, he was admitted to Harvard Graduate School of Design to study urban planning. When he returned to Los Angeles, he briefly worked for Pereira and Luckman, and then rejoined Gruen where he stayed until 1960.

In 1961, Gehry and family, which by now included two daughters, moved to Paris where he worked in the office of Andre Remondet. His French education in Canada was an enormous help. During that year of living in Europe, he studied works by LeCorbusier, Balthasar Neumann, and was attracted to the French Roman churches. In 1962, he returned to Los Angeles and set up his own firm. 

He has said on more than one occasion, "Personally, I hate chain link. I got involved with it because it was inevitably being used around my buildings. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." 

A project in 1979 illustrates his use of chain-link fencing in the construction of the Cabrillo Marine Museum, a 20,000 square foot compound of buildings that he "laced together" with chain-link fencing. These "shadow structures" as Gehry calls them, bind together the parts of the museum. 

Santa Monica Place, begun in 1973, has one outside wall that is nearly 300 feet long, six stories tall and hung with a curtain of chain link; a second layer over it in a different color spells out the name of the mall.

For a time, Gehry's work used "unfinished" qualities as a part of the design. As Paul Goldberger, New York Times Architecture Critic described it, "Mr. Gehry's architecture is known for its reliance on harsh, unfinished materials and its juxtaposition of simple, almost primal, geometric forms...(His) work is vastly more intelligent and controlled than it sounds to the uninitiated; he is an architect of immense gifts who dances on the line separating architecture from art but who manages never to let himself fall." 

One building in progress since 1985 is the Chiat/Day Office for Venice, California. The proposed three-story, 75,000 square foot building will sit above three underground levels of parking for 300 cars. The entry to the building is through a pair of 45-foot tall binoculars designed by Oldenburg and his wife Coosje van Bruggen. The shafts of the binoculars will contain an office and a library.

A guesthouse he designed in 1983 for a home in Wayzata, Minnesota that had been designed by Philip Johnson in 1952 proved a challenge that critics agree Gehry met and conquered. The guesthouse is actually a grouping of one-room buildings that appear as a collection of sculptural pieces.

In 1988, he did a monument to mark the centennial of the Sheet Metal Workers' International Association. It was built by 600 volunteers from the union in the cavernous central hall of the National Building Museum (formerly known as the Pension Building) in Washington, D.C. The 65-foot high construction was galvanized stainless steel, anodized aluminum, brass and copper. 

There is an interesting note regarding a statement Gehry prepared for the 1980 edition of Contemporary Architects , Gehry states, "I approach each building as a sculptural object, a spatial container, a space with light and air, a response to context and appropriateness of feeling and spirit. To this container, this sculpture, the user brings his baggage, his program, and interacts with it to accommodate his needs. If he can't do that, I've failed." 

California Architect Frank Gehry Named 1989 Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize

Frank Gehry of Santa Monica, California has been selected as the twelfth Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate. Although born in Canada, he became a citizen of the United States in 1950. He is the sixth American to receive the prestigious prize since it was established by The Hyatt Foundation in 1979. Architects from six other countries have also been so honored in the past decade.

The prize, consisting of a $100,000 grant, a medallion and formal certificate, will be presented in a ceremony on May 18 in Nara, Japan at Todai-Ji Buddhist Temple, the world's largest and oldest wooden structure, with the status of a National Treasure in that country.

Having just celebrated his sixtieth birthday, Gehry has achieved considerable fame in recent years due in part to some of his more unusual projects, making use of materials such as chain link fencing, cardboard, and corrugated metal in unorthodox ways. His own home in Santa Monica is a well-known example.

Gehry received his Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Southern California in 1954, with further study at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1956 and 1957.

His career was launched with the design of a highly regarded Los Angeles landmark, the Danziger Studio/Residence in 1964. A retrospective exhibition of his work, organized by the Walker Art Center of Minneapolis, Minnesota, toured major museums over the past two years, drawing record crowds.

In Los Angeles, the recent awarding of a commission to design the Walt Disney Concert Hall for the Music Center, estimated to cost one hundred million dollars to some of his more unusual projects, brought him added acclaim. In the past year, he has also received a commission for a major high-rise building for Progressive Corporation in Cleveland, and he won the competition for another in New York.

Gehry has received more than 25 national and regional AIA Awards, the Brunner Prize, and many others. He is a much sought after lecturer for museums, architecture societies and universities. In addition to his building designs, he has become widely known for his cardboard furniture concepts, and for designing museum exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art—from Art Treasures of Japan to the Treasures of Tutankhamun as well as for the works of contemporary artists.

Jay A. Pritzker, president of The Hyatt Foundation, announced the 1989 choice of the jury, saying, "The great body of work of architect Frank Gehry, which includes residences, museums, libraries, schools, shops, concert halls, restaurants, all manner of public buildings, and even a hay barn, demonstrates a range of styles that defies classification, but certainly warrants recognition for his contributions to the art of architecture.

 

Bill Lacy secretary to the jury, reported the formal citation from the selection panel, that reads as follows: "In an artistic climate that too often looks backward rather than toward the future, where retrospectives are more prevalent than risk-taking, it is important to honor the architecture of Frank Gehry.

Refreshingly original and totally American, proceeding as it does from his populist Southern California perspective, Gehry's work is a highly refined, sophisticated and adventurous aesthetic that emphasizes the art of architecture.

Bill Lacy, the executive director of the Pritzker Prize, wrote in his 1991 book, 100 Contemporary Architects, “As an architect/philosopher/artist, Dutchman Rem Koolhaas has expanded and continues to expand our perceptions of cities and civilization.”

Refreshingly original and totally American, proceeding as it does from his populist Southern California perspective, Gehry's work is a highly refined, sophisticated and adventurous aesthetic that emphasizes the art of architecture.

His sometimes controversial, but always arresting body of work, has been variously described as iconoclastic, rambunctious and impermanent, but the jury in making this award, commends this rest less spirit that has made his buildings a unique expression of contemporary society and its ambivalent values.

Gehry's architecture reflects his keen appreciation for the same social forces that have informed the work of outstanding artists through history, including many contemporaries with whom he often collaborates. His designs, if compared to American music, could best be likened to Jazz, replete with improvisation and a lively unpredictable spirit.

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.

Although the prize is for a lifetime of achievement, the jury hopes Mr. Gehry will view it as encouragement for continuing an extraordinary 'work in progress,' as well as for his significant contributions thus far to the architecture of the twentieth century."

The jury that selected Gehry consists of its chairman and founding member, J. Carter Brown, director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; and (alphabetically) Giovanni Agnelli, chairman of Fiat, from Torino, Italy Ada Louise Huxtable, author and architectural critic of New York; architect Ricardo Legorreta of Mexico City; 1982 Laureate/architect Kevin Roche of Hamden, Connecticut; and Jacob Rothschild, chair man of the board of trustees of the National Gallery of Art in London, England.

In an artistic climate that too often looks backward rather than toward the future, where retrospectives are more prevalent than risk-taking, it is important to honor the architecture of Frank O. Gehry.

Refreshingly original and totally American, proceeding as it does from his populist Southern California perspective, Gehry's work is a highly refined, sophisticated and adventurous aesthetic that emphasizes the art of architecture.

His sometimes controversial, but always arresting body of work, has been variously described as iconoclastic, rambunctious and impermanent, but the jury, in making this award, commends this restless spirit that has made his buildings a unique expression of contemporary society and its ambivalent values.

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.

Although the prize is for a lifetime of achievement, the jury hopes Mr. Gehry will view it as encouragement for continuing an extraordinary "work in progress," as well as for his significant contributions thus far to the architecture of the twentieth century.

Jury Members

J. Carter Brown (Chairman)
Giovanni Agnelli
Ada Louise Huxtable
Ricardo Legorreta
Kevin Roche
Jacob Rothschild
Bill Lacy (Secretary to the Jury)

Todai-ji Buddhist Temple, Nara, Japan

Todai-ji, or Eastern Great Temple, a Buddhist temple complex in the city of Nara, Japan, was originally founded in the year 743. At that time, Buddhism was at its height and served as a state religion. The best-known statue at Todai-ji Temple is Buddha Vairocana, known in Japanese as Daibutsu. It is a giant gilded statue 49 feet tall. It was originally housed in an all-wood building, the Daibutsu-den, 157 feet in height, reputedly the largest wooden building in the world of its time. The statue has been recast several times since for various reasons including earthquake damage, and the temple rebuilt twice after fire. The current building, finished in 1709 although immense, is about thirty percent smaller than its predecessor. The temple is a listed UNESCO World Heritage site as "Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara," together with seven other sites including temples, shrines, and places in the city of Nara.

Also built around the middle of the eighth century at Todai-ji, the original Shosoin, which is an architectural treasure in itself, served as the repository for the temple treasure. It is made in the Azekura style, a log-house construction that is often seen in old storehouses: the walls, intersecting at corners, are built up of hewn logs laid horizontally on top of each other. Shosoin safeguarded a heritage of around 9,000 different objects that date back to the seventh and eighth centuries along with numerous works from overseas, especially from Persia, China, and Korea.

Frank Gehry received the 1989 Pritzker Architecture Prize at the ceremony at Todai-ji, Nara, Japan.

 



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