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The Life and Work of Frank Gehry
Knopf
September 2015
On Sale: September 15, 2015
528 pages
ISBN: 0307701530
EAN: 9780307701534
Kindle: B00TNDOZCE
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Biography
From Pulitzer Prize–winning architectural critic Paul
Goldberger: an engaging, nuanced exploration of the life and
work of Frank Gehry, undoubtedly the most famous architect
of our time. This first full-fledged critical biography
presents and evaluates the work of a man who has almost
single-handedly transformed contemporary architecture in his
innovative use of materials, design, and form, and who is
among the very few architects in history to be both
respected by critics as a creative, cutting-edge force and
embraced by the general public as a popular figure.
Building Art shows the full range of Gehry’s work,
from early houses constructed of plywood and chain-link
fencing to lamps made in the shape of fish to the triumphant
success of such late projects as the spectacular art museum
of glass in Paris. It tells the story behind Gehry’s own
house, which upset his neighbors and excited the world with
its mix of the traditional and the extraordinary, and
recounts how Gehry came to design the Guggenheim Museum in
Bilbao, Spain, his remarkable structure of swirling titanium
that changed a declining city into a destination spot.
Building Art also explains Gehry’s sixteen-year quest
to complete Walt Disney Concert Hall, the beautiful,
acoustically brilliant home of the Los Angeles
Philharmonic.
Although Gehry’s architecture has been
written about widely, the story of his life has never been
told in full detail. Here we come to know his Jewish
immigrant family, his working-class Toronto childhood, his
hours spent playing with blocks on his grandmother’s kitchen
floor, his move to Los Angeles when he was still a teenager,
and how he came, unexpectedly, to end up in architecture
school. Most important, Building Art presents and
evaluates Gehry’s lifetime of work in conjunction with his
entire life story, including his time in the army and at
Harvard, his long relationship with his psychiatrist and the
impact it had on his work, and his two marriages and four
children. It analyzes his carefully crafted persona, in
which a casual, amiable “aw, shucks” surface masks a driving
and intense ambition. And it explores his relationship to
Los Angeles and how its position as home to outsider artists
gave him the freedom in his formative years to make the
innovations that characterize his genius. Finally, it
discusses his interest in using technology not just to
change the way a building looks but to change the way the
whole profession of architecture is practiced.
At
once a sweeping view of a great architect and an intimate
look at creative genius, Building Art is in many ways
the saga of the architectural milieu of the twenty-first
century. But most of all it is the compelling story of the
man who first comes to mind when we think of the lasting
possibilities of buildings as art.
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