Frank Owen Gehry

Frank Owen Gehry was born Frank Owen Goldberg on February 28, 1929.He is a Canadian-born
American architect, residing in Los Angeles.
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".

Frank Gehry’s Architecture

Gehry's best-known works include the titanium-clad Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao,
Spain; Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles; Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris,
France; MIT 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 in Minneapolis; 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; and 8 Spruce Street in New York City.
It was his private residence in Santa Monica, California that jump-started his career. Gehry is
also the designer of the future National Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial.
"Every building is by its very nature a sculpture. You can't help it. Sculpture is a three-
dimensional object and so is a building”

His Life Study

 Born Ephraim Owen Goldberg, into a Polish-Jewish family in Toronto, Ontario, his enthusiasm
for building futuristic cities out of scraps of wood was nurtured from a young age by his
grandmother, using leftover oddments from her husband's hardware store. In 1947, at the age
of 18, he moved with his family to Los Angeles and the family's name was changed from
Goldberg to Gehry. He later became a US citizen.
Unsure of what career to choose, Gehry took a job driving a delivery truck, while attending a
number of courses at Los Angeles City College. After various false starts he decided to try
architecture and - despite some difficulty with his drawing skills - won several scholarships to
the University of Southern California, from where, in 1954, he graduated top of his class with a
degree in architecture.
After graduating, Gehry joined the prestigious Los Angeles architectural firm of Victor Gruen
Associates. At the time, LA was experiencing a post-war housing boom, while innovative
individual designs by modern artists like Richard Neutra (1892-1970) and Rudolph M Schindler
(1887-1953) added to the excitement of the city's architectural scene. Following a year's
interruption for compulsory military service, Gehry moved with his wife and children to
Cambridge, to study city planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, but returned
(disillusioned) to Los Angeles without completing his masters degree. After a short period,
during which time he returned to Victor Gruen Associates, he left LA for a year's stay in Paris,
France, where he spent a year working for the French architect Andre Remondet, while
studying the work of the pioneer modernist Le Corbusier (1887-1965).

Design theme and Philosophy

 Although frank gehry does not personally associate with the movement, critics primarily
consider his design philosophy to be deconstructivism, an approach characterized by
fragmentation and distortions of traditional structure, informed by his belief that all
artists should be true to themselves.
 Philosophically, deconstructivism comes as a critical response to modernism, in which
the form of a building is expected to follow strictly from its function. Use of asymmetry,
exaggerated proportions and unconventional materials.
 Modernist buildings, epitomized by rectangular steel and glass, elimination of
unnecessary detail and adherence to rigid geometric norms.
 Modernist architecture reflects contemporary philosophies regarding social harmony
and machine-like organization.
 Deconstructivism is thus called as it attempts to destabilize modernist thinking by
breaking up design into highly stylized, individual parts.
 The guggenheim museum in balboa, spain, gehry’s most iconic work, features an
exterior of titanium, glass and limestone that is both rectangular and traditional and
also dramatically curved and folded.
 Gehry’s architecture has undergone a marked evolution from the plywood and
corrugated-metal vernacular of his early works to the distorted but pristine concrete of
his later works. However, the works retain a deconstructed aesthetic that fits well with
the increasingly disjointed culture to which they belong.
 The frame houses both regular and irregular gallery shapes within.
 The blend of classic and distorted figures in gehry's work fragments buildings into
elements visually at odds with one another and with their respective environments.
 Gehry intends this elaborate approach to design to greatly imprint his buildings in local
culture.
 Gehry’s style at times seems unfinished or even crude, but his work is consistent with
the california ‘funk’ art movement in the 1960s and early 1970s, which featured the use
of inexpensive found objects and non-traditional media such as clay to make serious art.
 Gehry has been called "the apostle of chain-link fencing and corrugated metal siding”.
 However, a retrospective exhibit at new york's whitney museum in 1988 revealed that
he is also a sophisticated classical artist, who knows european art history and
contemporary sculpture and painting
  Gehry's work has its detractors. Some have said

 His buildings waste structural resources by creating functionless forms.

 The buildings are apparently designed without accounting of the local climate.
 The spectacle of a building often overwhelms its intended use, especially in the case of
museums and arenas.
 The buildings do not seem to belong in their surroundings.
 Gehry was interested in the form of a fish, and the notion of bringing movement into his
architecture, it was his way of exploring the technique of double curves
 As a young boy he has memories of going to the marketplace with his grandparents and
purchasing carp

Dancing House, Prague

Dancing House also known as Nationale-Nederlanden Building is located in downtown Prague,
Czech Republic was designed by Croatian-Czech architect Vlado Milunić in co-operation with
Frank Gehry on a vacant riverfront plot (where the previous building had been destroyed during
the Bombing of Prague in 1945). The building was designed in 1992 and completed in 1996. The
name Dancing House came about as the house vaguely resembles a pair of dancers.

The very non-traditional design was controversial at the time and is rather a rarity in Prague to
a have a contemporary modern glass building surrounded by historic architecture. The Czech
president Václav Havel, who lived for decades next to the site, had supported it, hoping that the
building would become a center of cultural activity. Dancing House has daring, curvy outlines,
which led its architects, Vlado Milunc and the American Frank O Gehry, to initially name it the
"Astaire & Rogers Building", after the legendary dance duo.

The site of gehry's dancing house was originally occupied by a house inthe neo- renaissance
style from the end of the 19th century. That house was destroyed during bombing in 1945, its
remains finally removed in 1960.the construction started` in 1994 and the house was finished in
1996. The top floor of Dancing House is host to one of the city's leading French restaurant
Celeste Restaurant which has magnificent views. Diners can enjoy delightful cuisine and
magnificent views over the river and up to Prague Castle.
The building is an example of deconstructive architecture, with an unusual shape.

Conceptual Sketch
It reflects a woman and man (Ginger Rogers And Fred Astair) dancing together.

Plan
 Section
Construction is from 99 concrete panels each of different shape and dimension, each therefore
requiring a unique wooden form.The glass tower ginger bends and clings to the concrete tower
fred, which has a metal cupola on the top, representing hair. The house is an example of a
deconstructive architecture. Plan area open to public cupola resembling hairs restaurant area
“ginger and fred” dancing on the riverside, the top floor of dancing house is the only part open
to the public, and is home to one of the city's leading restaurants. For the reason already given,
it is called the ginger & fred restaurant. The dancing house has two central bodies. The first is a
tower of glass that is close to half height and is supported by curved pillars, the second runs
parallel to the river, which is characterized by the moldings that follow a wavy motion and
distributed through the windows so the non-aligned.
Some thought that the building was a statement of liberation, freedom and democratic beliefs
though even after decades some continued to hate the building. Though the buildings designed
by Gehry may seem random, there is a logic to everything that he does; radically sculptured
organic shapes that have pronounced visual gestures and forms. The figurative quality to the
building is the sweeping curvy female figure attached to the male straight one that composes
the two sections of the building.

References
http://fc07.deviantart.com/fs40/f/2009/020/7/6/Dancing_House_of_Prague_by_alierturk.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_House
http://www.ptarmigannest.net/?cat=75
http://www.pragueexperience.com/places.asp?PlaceID=651
http://blog.addicted2decorating.com/2008/01/architecture-dancing-house-prague.html