FRANK GEHRY
Frank Owen Gehry, born in 1929, is a Canadian-born American architect and designer, residing in Los Angeles. He moved to California at the age of seventeen. Gehry completed his Bachelor's degree in Architecture from the University of Southern California in 1954, and continued his studies focused on city planning at Harvard's Graduate School of Design in 1956. In 1962, Gehry founded his firm, Frank O. Gehry and Associates. Unquestionably one of the most acclaimed and recognizable contemporary architects to live, Gehry blends architecture and sculpture. A number of his buildings, including his private residence, have become world-renowned attractions. His works are cited as being among the most important works of contemporary architecture in the 2010 World Architecture Survey, which led Vanity Fair to label him as "the most important architect of our age".
One of his most distinguished masterworks, The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain, completed in 1997, is a good example of Gehry’s assertive, yet poetic forms, boasting distinctive titanium-clad curves and a soaring glass atrium. Other celecrated works include the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles; Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, France; Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Ray and Maria Stata Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Vontz Center for Molecular Studies on the University of Cincinnati campus; Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle; New World Center in Miami Beach; Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota; the Dancing House in Prague; the Vitra Design Museum and the MARTa Herford Museum in Germany; the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto; the Cinémathèque Française in Paris; 8 Spruce Street in New York City; and the National Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial.
In 1986, a major retrospective exhibition titled "The Architecture of Frank Gehry" was organized by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and toured throughout North America, culminating at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In addition to several honorary doctorates, Gehry is the recipient of some of the most prestigious art and architecture awards one can be bestowed such as: the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal (1999), the Lifetime Achievement Award, Americans for the Arts (2000), and National Medal of Arts, National Endowment of the Arts (1998), J. Paul Getty Medal (2015), Harvard Arts Medal (2016), Pritzker Architecture Prize (1989), The Paez Medal of Art (2020), and The Presidential Metal of Freedom (2016). He holds over twenty honorary doctorates from some of the most prestigious institutions worldwide.
Gehry lives and works in Los Angeles, California.