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FRANK O. GEHRY

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FRANK O. GEHRY

Frank Owen Gehry (born Ephraim Owen Goldberg, February 28, 1929) is a Pritzker Prize winning architect based in Los Angeles, California. His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions. Many museums, companies, and cities seek Gehry's services as a badge of distinction, beyond the product he delivers. His best known works include the titanium-covered Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles, Dancing House in Prague, Czech Republic, and his private residence in Santa Monica, California, which jump-started his career, lifting it from the status of "paper architecture", a phenomenon which many famous architects have experienced in their formative decades through experimentation almost exclusively on paper before receiving their first major commission in later years. Gehry was born into a Jewish family in Toronto, Ontario. A creative child, he was encouraged by his grandmother, with whom he would build little cities out of scraps of wood. It should be noted, also, that Frank Gehry's grandmother, Caplan, had influenced him in other ways. As a child, he would observe his grandmother every Thursday putting a live carp in a bathtub full of water to later make gefilte fish. Frank would observe the movement and form of these fish, which later would be an enormous influence and underlying theme in much of his work. In 1947 Gehry moved to California, got a job driving a delivery truck, and studied at Los Angeles City College, eventually to graduate from the University of Southern California's School of Architecture. After graduation from USC in 1954, he spent time away from the field of architecture in numerous other jobs, including service in the U.S. Army. He studied city planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design for a year, leaving before completing the program. Still known as Frank Goldberg, he married Anita Snyder, who he claims was the one who told him change his name, which he did, to Frank Gehry. Divorcing Snyder in the mid-1960s, he married Berta, his current wife, in the mid-1970s. He has two daughters from his first marriage and two sons from his second marriage. Having grown up in Canada, Gehry is a huge fan of hockey. He began a hockey league in his office, though he no longer plays with them. In 2004, he designed the trophy for the World Cup of Hockey. He has been seeing the psychoanalyst Milton Wexler for over 35 years. Exceptionally, Gehry allows Wexler to give comments to the press about him. Gehry holds dual citizenship in the United States and Canada. He lives in Santa Monica, California, continuing to practice out of Los Angeles. The Gehry Residence is Frank Gehry's own house. It was originally an extension, designed by Gehry built around an existing house. It makes use of unconventional materials, such as chain link fence and corrugated steel. It is sometimes considered one of the earliest deconstructivist buildings, although Gehry himself denies that it was deconstructivism. The Gehry Residence is located in Santa Monica, California. In 1977 Frank and Berta Gehry bought a pink Dutch colonial that was originally built in 1920. Gehry wanted to explore with the materials he was already using: metal, plywood, chain link fencing, and wood framing. He chose to wrap the outside of the house with a new exterior while still leaving the old exterior visible. He hardly touched the rear and south facades and to the other sides of the house he wedged in titled glass cubes. Then, in the fall of 1991, they chose to remodel due to the needs of their growing family including two teenage boys. Many of Gehry's neighbours were not happy at the unusual building being built in their neighbourhood. It's rumoured that one neighbour used to regularly bring his dog to defecate on Gehry's lawn, in protest. The warped forms of Frank Gehry's structures are classified sometimes as being of the deconstructivist, or "DeCon" school of postmodernist architecture, whether or not he consciously holds such inclinations. Gehry himself disavows any association with the movement and claims no formal alliance to any particular architectural movement in general. The DeCon movement stems from a series of discussions between French philosopher Jaques Derrida and architect Peter Eisenman in which they question the utility of commonly accepted notions of structure alone in being able to define and communicate a meaning or truth about a creator's intended definition (a definition of space in architecture, for example), and counterposes our preconceived notions of structure with its undoing; the deconstruction of that very same preconception of space and structure. It is in this criticism or deconstruction of a given construct, in this case, a structure, that architecture finds its justification or its "place of presence". In that sense, DeCon is often referred to as post-structuralist in nature for its ability to go beyond current modalities of structural definition. In architecture, its application tends to depart from modernism in its inherent criticism of culturally inherited givens such as societal goals and functional necessity. Because of this, unlike early modernist structures, DeCon structures are not required to reflect specific social or universal ideas, such as speed or universality of form, and they do not reflect a belief that form follows function. Gehry's own Santa Monica residence is a commonly cited example of deconstructivist architecture as it was so drastically divorced from its original context, and in such a manner, as to subvert its original spatial intention. Gehry is sometimes associated with what is known as the "Los Angeles School", or the "Santa Monica School" of architecture. The appropriateness of this designation and the existence of such a school, however, remains controversial due to the lack of a unifying philosophy or theory. This designation stems from the Los Angeles area producing a group of the most influential postmodern architects, including such notable Gehry contemporaries as Eric Owen Moss and Pritzker Prize-winner Thom Mayne of Morphosis, as well as the famous schools of architecture at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (co-founded by Thom Mayne), UCLA, and the USC.

My Interests

Nearing completion
Gehry Partners, LLP
Science Library
Princeton University
Princeton, New Jersey
Photo: Michael O'Boyle

The Science Library, located on a two acre site on the main campus, is envisioned as an efficient, easily accessible environment conducive to the research requirements of the Princeton University community in the 21st century.

In addition to providing classrooms, offices, and public space, the Science Library will house the Biology, Chemistry, Geosciences and Map/GIS print collections, and will provide facilities for the New Media Lab, the Educational Technology Center, and the Princeton Institute for Computational Science and Engineering.






The Science Library's mission to further the advancement of learning at Princeton University extends to the provision of a wide variety of electronic resources, including catalogs, indexes, reference tools, full text electronic books, electronic journals, numeric data, digital maps and images.
Primary exterior materials include stainless steel, brick, glass, and painted plaster.
Sketch Gehry Partners, LLP
Model photo Gehry Partners, LLP

Total area: 89,000 square feet
Estimated Completion: 2008

Client: Princeton University
Architects: Gehry Partners, LLP
Design Partner: Frank Gehry
Project Designer: Craig Webb
Project partner: Terry Bell
Project Manager: Larry Tighe
Project Architect: Mok Wai Wan
Project Team:
Berenika Boberska
Danelle Briscoe
Scott Carter
Anand Devarajan
Susannah Dickinson
Raymond Gaetan, Jr.
Craig Gilbert
Christian Glauser
Faris Hermiz
Yvonne Kelly
Kurt Komraus
Meaghan Lloyd
Michael Patrick O’Boyle
Timothy Paulson
Kristin Ragins
Hiroshi Tokumaru
Monica Valtierra Day
Lucianna Vidal
Brad Winkeljohn
Nora Wolin
Brian Zamora

Gehry Partners, LLP

Gehry Partners, LLP
Jay Pritzker Pavilion
Millennium Park
Chicago, Illinois


"How do you make everyone - not just the people in the seats, but the people sitting 400 feet away on the lawn - feel good about coming to this place to listen to music? The answer is, you bring them into it. You make the proscenium larger; you build a trellis with a distributed sound system. You make people feel part of the experience."
Frank Gehry

Located in Grant Park, along the edge of Lake Michigan, the Jay Pritzker Pavilion is an open-air venue featuring performances by the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra, as well as jazz, blues, and other world music performances.




Clad in stainless steel panels, that frame the stage opening and connect to an overhead trellis of curved steel pipes, the Pavilion is a highly sculptural design element intended to act as a focal point for the Millennium Park.
The trellis, in the shape of a flattened dome, is supported by cylindrical concrete pylons clad in stainless steel panels.




The sound system is suspended from the trellis that spans the entire 600 foot length and 300 foot width of the lawn area. This sound system gives the audience a fuller sense of the onstage sound and controls the sound level in the surrounding neighborhood.
Performance sound is reinforced and enhanced by speaker clusters located in front of the Pavilion.



Seating for the audience is provided in two areas. The main seating area accommodates up to 4,000 people in fixed seats and is located immediately adjacent to the Pavilion. Beyond the main seating area, a lawn area accommodates an additional 7,000 people in a more informal environment.





Photo Gehry Partners, LLP

The Pavilion features a series of portable risers that accommodates an orchestra of up to 120 musicians, and a choral terrace that accommodates a choir of up to 150 members. Back stage areas are shared with the adjacent Music and Dance Theater. Large glass doors allow the Pavilion to be used for public functions, banquets, receptions, and lectures, during the winter months.

The decorative lighting system enhances the Pavilion with colored light washes and projections during evening performances.


A pedestrian bridge, spanning Columbus Drive, links the Pavilion to the eastern portion of Grant Park, and the edge of Lake Michigan.



Busway and metro rail track run adjacent to Grant Park pass at the lowest level of the three level underground parking structure below the Pavilion.

Today, with the combination of architecture, monumental sculpture and landscape design, the 24.5 acre Millennium Park has become the crowning achievement for Chicago in the tradition of its original founders.
Anish Kapoor's huge Cloud Gate sculpture on the AT&T Plaza is immensely popular.



The Jay Pritzker Pavilion was named in memory of Chicago business leader Jay Pritzker who, with his wife Cindy, established the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1979.


Drawing Gehry partners, LLP
Site Plan


Model photo Gehry partners, LLP


Model photo Gehry partners, LLP


Model photo Gehry partners, LLP

Total area: 95,000 square feet
Completed: 2004

Client: Millennium Park
Architect: Gehry Partners, LLP
Design Partner: Frank O. Gehry
Project Designer: Craig Webb
Project Architect: Manoucher Eslami
Project Team:
Reza Bagherzadeh
Chris Banks
Saffet Bekiroglu
Tom Besai
James Jackson
Leigh Jerrard
Kurt Komraus
Jason Luk
David May
Chris Mazzier
Frank Medrano
Sy Melgazo
Napolean Merana
Chris Mercier
Julianna Morais
Diego Petrate
Lynn Pilon
Birgit Schneider
Tensho Takemori
Scott Uriu
Adam Wheeler
Project Management: U.S. Equities
Structural Engineer: Skidmore Owings & Merrill
Mechanical & Electrical Engineer: McDonough Associates
Theatre Consultant/Lighting Designers: Schuler & Shook
Acoustical Consultant/Audio Systems Design: The Talaske Group

Gehry Partners, LLP

Ground Broken
Gehry Partners, LLP
Hall Winery
St. Helena
Napa Valley, California

The woven boards of the canopies give the experience of overhead leaves and branches.


Photo Gehry Partners, LLP

The overall plan for the Hall Winery, acquired by Craig and Kathryn Hall in 2003, consists of three state-of-the-art production warehouses and two “showpiece” structures related to wine tours, tasting, and retail sales.

In order to fit within the scale and context of the surrounding environment, the facilities are articulated as a series of discreet buildings organized around a central courtyard.


Photo Gehry Partners, LLP

At the focal point of the courtyard is a renovated existing historical structure built in 1885 that once served the Napa Valley Wine Cooperative on the site. The courtyard and adjacent landscaped areas also provide opportunities for the Halls to display sculpture pieces from their extensive art collection.

The Hospitality Building is located at the western end of the central courtyard and serves as the architectural highlight of the facility and the culmination of the winery tour.
Articulated as discreet smaller volumes, clad in natural materials like wood and stone, the extensive use of glass as an enclosure creates a sense of connection to the surrounding vineyard landscape for the occupants.


Photo Gehry Partners, LLP

The building sits on a large reflecting pool which serves as a transition from the expansive limestone courtyard into the natural landscape.
The tasting areas, open to an outdoor terrace, overlook the vineyard and the distant Mayacamas Mountains.


Photo Gehry Partners, LLP

The other “showpiece” building, the Reception Building, serves to welcome visitors approaching from the parking lot and the drop-off area.
The one-story glass building, contains a reception hall, visitor restrooms, art display walls, and a multimedia theater for viticulture education, presentations, and tour orientation.


Photo Gehry Partners, LLP

The most prominent architectural features on the site are freeform trellis canopies that envelop the Hospitality and Reception buildings, providing shade for the occupants, while minimizing reflective glare from the glass to the surrounding areas.


Photo Gehry Partners, LLP

The woven boards of the canopies give the experience of overhead leaves and branches, while the gestures of the trellis forms serve to formally unify the discreet building volumes.


Photo Gehry Partners, LLP
Installation for the Groundbreaking at Hall Winery.

Photo courtesy Gehry Partners, LLP
Frank Gehry with Project Designer Edwin Chan

Total area:127,703 square feet
Hospitality & Reception: 20,720 square feet

Estimated completion: October 2009

Client: Hall Winery
Architects: Gehry Partners, LLP
Design Partner: Frank Gehry
Project Designer: Edwin Chan
Project Architect: Henry Brawner
Project Manager: Frank Weeks
Project Team:
Sean Gallivan
Josh Morey
Ry Morrison
Narineh Mirzaeian
Jawn Lim
Jose Gonzalez
Markus Sohst
Andy Thompson
Yung Tran
John Winston
Francois Blanciak
Manuel Blanco-Longueria

Associate Architect: Lail Design Group
Executive Principal: Jon Lail
Principal Architect: S. Douglas Osborn Principal Architect: Paul Kelley
Project Architect: Jarrod Denton

Gehry Partners, LLP

Gehry Partners, LLP
Counceling Center
Danish Cancer Society
Aarhus, Denmark


Photo Gehry Partners, LLP

Inspired by the Maggie’s Centres in the UK, the vision of Maggie Keswick Jencks when she herself was treated for cancer, the Danish Cancer Society is building its first new non-institutional counceling center.

The new counseling center is a renovation of an existing 1908 building, designed by the Danish architect Rudolf Clausen, which serves as a gateway to the Aarhus Hospital campus.


Photo Gehry Partners, LLP

The design maintains the existing historic house walls and windows and inserts two floor levels of program above the expanded lower level of the house. These floors are supported independently from the existing exterior walls creating an uninterrupted space, or canyon, allowing natural light from the new glass roof to reach all levels of the house.


Photo Gehry Partners, LLP


Photo Gehry Partners, LLP

Intended to be a “house without doors” the design offers cancer patients and their families a comfortable environment during the treatment process by providing various programs on 3 levels.
A workshop area for painting and small art projects, a gym, a lounge and administrative support function are located on the garden level with access to the garden via a new amphitheater.


Photo Gehry Partners, LLP

Above on the first level or “Town Square” a lounge area, group dining area, demonstration kitchen for cooking classes will provide more public areas for social interaction.
The top floor will be a more private area with private and group counseling areas and lounge areas.


Photo Gehry Partners, LLP

The model has now been reworked and refined and is being digitized, using Digital Project software, to create a three-dimensional computer model, also known as building information model (BIM) or master model.


Photo Gehry Partners, LLP

Exhibition
Digital Project
Frank Gehry’s Vision

Total area: 600 square meters
Expected completion: 2008

Client: The Foundation for the Danish Cancer Society's Patient Support
Design Architect: Gehry Partners, LLP
Design Partners: Frank Gehry / Edwin Chan
Project Architect: Yoram LePair
Project Manager: Earle Briggs
Executive Architect: Cubo Arkitekter A/S
Structural/MEP-FP Engineer: Søren Jensen Rådgivende Ingeniørfirma
Climate Engineer: Transsolar Energietechnik GmbH
Landscape Architect: Kristine Jensen

Gehry Partners, LLP

Digital Project
Frank Gehry’s Vision
Danish Architecture Centre


Photo: Thomas Mayer

“I started making shapes that were hard to draw. That led us to the computer and to Catia software which made me realize the possibilities and the level and degree of accuracy you could create in your documents and your relationships because of the software.”
Frank Gehry
Sketch Gehry Partners, LLP
Fish sculpture for the 1992 Olympics, in Barcelona, Spain.

Catia is Dassault Systèmes 3D modelling and fabrication software used by the aerospace industry. Digital Project, a new software that is simpler, more usable, and able to interface with other systems, was developed by Gehry Technologies to disseminate his Catia enabled design and construction methodologies to the rest of the world.

“Talking Heads” on monitors hanging from the ceiling talk about the different aspects of Digital Project. When visitors use the attached earphones the installation resembles an ongoing cocktail party.
A fast forward video, courtesy of Boeing, demonstrates how the parts come together using Catia.

Select a subject ranging from Evolution, Collaboration, Design, Digitizing and Tools, to Virtual Building, Engineering, Contracting and Construction, and hear what “They” have to say.

To convey how solutions often begin as simple sketches and diagrams the first gallery is wallpapered with blown up hand drawn sketches that illustrate the spontaneous and immediate outcomes of conversations with clients and project team members.

“The model is usually built by the architect. The architect who is coordinating the project will establish a skeleton. Building off this generic skeleton, the structural engineer will then dimension and design and build his columns or his concrete structural system. The cladding fabricator will devise and design and build a model of his cladding system and integrate that. So all the different people participating in the project begin to derive information from the model and contribute information back into the model. So the model is almost like a living thing that keeps growing through the project life cycle.”
Cristiano Ceccato
Director, Research & Consulting

Gehry Partners begin the design process by creating hand-built models in order to capture the design intent. Once these models have been reworked and refined, they are digitized to create three-dimensional computer models, also known as building information models (BIM) or master models.


Photo Gehry Partners, LLP

Small SLA (Stereolithography Apparatus) models are used to physically verify the digital geometries to Gehry Partners and their consultants and accurately represent the design intent to clients.

Four very different projects, a skyscraper in Hong Kong, the Sagrada Familia Church in Barcelona, a small project for the Danish Cancer Society, and the MIT Stata Center in Massachusett demonstrate, with models and photos, how these technologies have been used to change the process of building design and construction.



Gehry Technologies became the BIM process consultant for One Island East, the 70-story Swire building in Hong Kong, and used Digital Project to create the virtual 3D model prior to construction.

“We had infused a very precise discipline into the whole design process where architects, engineering consultants, structural engineers, all had to design to the same precise vocabulary. I think it has been an incredible process of intuitive collaboration.
It is all about project certainty. We know what we’re designing, we know how much it’s going to cost, we know how it’s going to be built, and for us as a developer that is paramount to total success.”
Stephen Fong
Managing Director Swire Properties Ltd .

The Sagrada Família Church in Barcelona has been under construction since 1882 and is still some years from completion.
As part of an ongoing involvement with the Sagrada Família Church researchers in SIAL ( Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory ) lead by Professor Mark Burry are currently working on investigation into Antoni Gaudí's final design models.
Photo courtesy SIAL

By using parametric modeling to create designs that are consistent with all of the available historical information on the church, new insights are gained into Gaudí's own generative system. The results from these investigations are used to specify how the Church is actually being completed, thus making the church itself a statement of Gaudí's design intent.
Photo courtesy SIAL

“We don’t have to worry about whether or not we are fitting in with a paradigm of planned sections and elevations, all the other typical drawings that architects are obliged to use. We can go straight from our computer to the stonemason’s yard, to their computer and we only sort of, negotiate though the prototypes that we make, and what we look at on our screens.”
Mark Burry

By choosing Gehry Partners for the Stata Center, MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology ,
made a statement not only about the campus plan, but also about the process of design and construction. Project team members were asked to work in unique ways, with slightly different tools and varying regulations about how to work together.
Photo: Roland Halbe

At the center of those "unique ways" was the use of 3D modelling to guide the design, engineering, fabrication, and construction of Frank Gehry's avant-garde design.
Sketch Gehry Partners, LLP

“On MIT where the 3D model was a tool almost from the beginning, there can be a conversation about how the building is going to be put together in terms of detailing, but also in terms of construction sequence, much earlier in the process, because the understanding of what we’re trying to achieve technically and architecturally is starting to take place a lot earlier.”
Marc Salette
Partner, Gehry Partner, LLP



Digital Project image Gehry Partners, LLP
Digital Project image Gehry Partners, LLP
Photo: Richard Sobol

A proposal for the Danish Cancer Society turns a 1908 building, designed by Danish architect Rudolf Clausen, into a modern, open ‘house with no doors’ for patients and their relatives.


Digital Project image Gehry Partners, LLP

“Since the very beginning, in the initial phase when we spoke to our local architect, we have already talked about the possibility of using Gehry Technology. But the question is, how does one use the technology in the context that is not like Bilbao, that is not like Disney Hall, that has no curve? I think that the possibility is endless in the sense that, although it’s modest in scale, the idea, the premise of creating a digital model that everybody can work on, is an asset.
Using Digital Project allows everybody in the team to collaborate on the design, to work out the structure. So the opportunity to use the technology, the software, to allow us to collaborate with our local architect, and with the structural engineer, to try to come up with a solution and reach a point where we can implement the project in a timely way is very important.”
Edwin Chan
Gehry Partners, LLP

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12541 Beatrice Street, Los Angeles, CA 90066 USA Gehry Partners, LLP is a full service firm with broad international experience in academic, commercial, museum, performance, and residential projects. Frank Gehry established his practice in Los Angeles, California in 1962. The Gehry partnership, Gehry Partners, LLP, was formed in 2002 and currently supports a staff of over 175 people. Gehry Partners employs a large number of senior architects who have extensive experience in the technical development of building systems and construction documents, and who are highly qualified in the management of complex projects. 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. The partners in Gehry Partners, LLP are: Frank Gehry, Brian Aamoth, Terry Bell, John Bowers, Edwin Chan, Berta Gehry, Marc Salette, Tensho Takemori, Laurence Tighe and Craig Webb.

Preliminary sketches for the Panama Puente de Vida Museo © Frank O. Gehry