Frank Gehry

I found Jason Miller's writing to be accessible and insightful. The photos, which is of course the driving force of this book, are wonderful. I've heard arguments that Gehry's work is inharmonious with traditional communities. I think it's important however to view Gehry's work as deconstructionist in nature much like Picasso. Slant step and taken to the extreme the buildings move beyond functional to art. This is a must read/look for architects and wanna be's a like.

If you are like me, Frank Gehry is someone you had not heard of prior to the opening of his landmark Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. No museum building has captured the world's attention like this one since Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Recently, I was stunned to find out that he had designed the new performing arts center that is under construction at Bard College in New York State. During my campus visit last winter, I vowed to see more of his work. I was delighted when this book appeared on our library's shelves. The book provides an overview of Mr. Gehry's career and interests in Jason Miller's introduction. I was surprised by the many parallels to Frank Lloyd Wright's career. Like Wright, he designed both homes and public buildings. He also designs furniture, using ordinary materials with an eye to making furniture more affordable. Unlike Wright, he often did mundane designs early in his career for commercial developments. Also like Wright, companies were interested in how his designs could make them more productive. The Chiat/Day Building's conference rooms in a binocular reminded me of Wright's conference room space in his original home and studio. Mr. Gehry also does fish designs, modeled after the carp his mother would bring home to make gefilte fish for the family. Even more impressive is the way that some buildings feature marvelous pop art sculptures, especially by Claes Oldenburg. The introduction also explains how Mr. Gehry begins with physical models, and his staff uses a software model to convert those models into physical designs for construction. The highlights of the books come in the many fine color photographs of the exteriors and interiors of his buildings. The outsides are often almost outlandish. For instance, his residence in Santa Monica, California looks like a construction site in the middle of a dense garden from the exterior. Inside, the views are more soothing and inviting (except perhaps for the wire reinforcement in the window glass). In other cases, the exterior makes a major point about the interior such as in the California Aerospace Museum and Theater which has a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter hung on an outside wall while part of the adjacent building's walls slant as though flying themselves. The interior looks like a hanger, and reminded me of the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum. His use of materials can be quite eclectic, which you see in the tiny Norton Residence in Venice, California. I was fascinated to see the almost-Usonian appearance of the Sirmai-Peterson residence in Thousand Oaks, California. In this design and many others, he uses water or reflective materials on the building's exterior to create beautiful interactions with the environment and light. I liked his museum spaces best. The Frederick R. Weisman Art and Teaching Museum in Minneapolis, Minnesota seemed like a modern rendition of an academic ivory tower that attracts the e

Compiled and written by architectural expert and writer Jason Miller, Frank Gehry is a truly gorgeous, full-color photographic showcase of Gehry's avant-garde architecture, ranging from the Schnabel Residence in Brentwood, California; to the Nationale-Nederlanden Building in Prague, Czech Republic; to the Experience Music Project in Seattle, Washington. An impressive coffee-table book offering beautiful, panoramic captures of architectural genius in both form and function, Frank Gehry epitomizes the life and work of its title architect largely through image accompanied by brief captions, backgrounded with a few short essays enhancing the majesty of the structures themselves. Frank Gehry is a welcome and highly recommended addition to professional, academic, and community library Architectural Studies reference collections.