Decided to choose the architect Frank Gehry as my creative professional designer. He seems very interesting to me and I want to learn more about him since he is considered to be a pioneer in my chosen profession

University Degree Architecture, Building and Planning

Creative Professional Report (Frank Gehry)

I decided to choose the architect Frank Gehry as my creative professional designer. He seems very interesting to me and I want to learn more about him since he is considered to be a pioneer in my chosen profession.

In an artistic climate that too often looks backwards rather that toward the future, where retrospectives are more prevalent than risk-taking, it is important to honor the architecture of Frank O. Gehry. His refreshing originality and totally American style, has made Gehry’s work highly refined, sophisticated and so adventurous that it really emphasizes the art of architecture. Frank Gehry is a master architect who is still living, and has greatly changed the face of architecture. He got this title from hard work.

Frank Gehry is one of the most sought-after, internationally recognized and prolific architects and designers in the world today. His work defies categorization, but has become an icon of current architecture with such projects as the Vitra Museum in Weil am Rhein, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Gehry’s newest architectural projects include the proposed and controversial New Jersey Nets complex in Brooklyn, New York, a satellite museum for the Guggenheim, a hospital wing in Scotland and a museum extension in Gehry’s birthplace of Toronto. In addition to designing over 30 existing buildings, Gehry has distinguished himself with a handful of furniture designs, created throughout his career.

Walt Disney Concert Hall

“It is a serene, ennobling building that will give people in this city of private places a new sense of the pleasures of public space.”
Paul Goldberger

“The Walt Disney Concert hall will be

a feast for your eyes, ears, and spirits.”

Gil Garcetti

Frank Gehry considers the Walt Disney Concert Hall to be his first major project in his own home town. Designed by Frank O. Gehry, this modern building's sinuous curves and soaring architecture are so seductive that it tempts even those who dislike classical music to attend a performance just to enjoy the auditorium's beauty. From the stainless steel curves of its striking exterior to the state-of-the-art acoustics of the hardwood-paneled main auditorium, Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall, new home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, will be one of the most acoustically sophisticated concert halls in the world. The hall is destined to be a new architectural landmark, generating as much excitement as Gehry's Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, which its design predates. This book, which includes an introduction by Gehry, traces the history of the hall from its inception through the architect selection process, construction, and completion of the building, which is recorded in acclaimed architectural photographer Grant Mudford's stunning images. Esa-Pekka Salonen, music director for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, recounts his first impressions of Gehry and the models for the new building in an essay that also defines what makes a great orchestra and a great concert hall.

This is a preview of the whole essay

Walt Disney Concert Hall will be a striking addition to the city's cultural and architectural landscape, occupying a 3.6-acre site - a full city block at the intersection of First Street and Grand Avenue in the historic Bunker Hill area. The dramatically curved exterior of Walt Disney Concert Hall is clad in stainless steel panels. The building's orientation, combined with the curving and folding exterior walls, will present highly sculptural compositions that wrap the entire building, presenting multiple facades to the surrounding neighborhood. The grand stairway and oval courtyard will form the primary entrance to the building and orient it to the existing Music Center complex. Towering glass panels will create a spectacular entry to the Hall's main lobby. An urban park for public gathering surrounds Walt Disney Concert Hall and will feature expansive public gardens, colorful and ornamental landscaping, walkways, benches, and shade trees.

Vitra International Headquarters

Gehry's distinctive corporate structures function as iconic symbols for their organizations. Such is the case with his Vitra International Headquarters in a suburb of Basel, which echoes the Vitra International Manufacturing Facility and Design Museum (1987–89) he designed in Weil am Rhein, Germany. Like the manufacturing facility, the headquarters' rectilinear office building provides a subdued backdrop for a visually separate anterior structure—in this case, a "villa" whose smaller scale and animated arcs recall the museum. The villa is sheathed in zinc, the roofing material used in Weil am Rhein, but its facade is distinguished from the earlier buildings by its brightly painted stucco panels.

As in his earlier designs for the workplace, Gehry structured human relations through the architectural arrangements. The centrally located villa, which houses a cafeteria, meeting rooms, and reception area, functions as the social heart of the organization, its smaller size creating an intimate gathering place. An atrium joins the rectilinear office block to this central core, thereby directing employees to a common point of convergence. The neutral office space counters the more distinctive architecture of the villa, and it recalls the open plans of Gehry's Rouse Company Headquarters (1969–74), and his Chiat/Day Building (1985–91). Gehry also negotiates the relationship of the building with the surrounding neighborhood, which ranges from factories to residences: the low-rise office building has a commercial quality, while the villa relates to the scale of the nearby homes.

Nationale-Nederlanden Building

Gehry used his customary contextual approach in looking for clues to guide this design, in collaboration with Studio Vlado Milunic, of a modest speculative office building. Situated along the River Vltava in a historic district where new construction is strictly regulated, the building is prominently located on a corner across from a public square and a major bridge. The location and Gehry's observations of Prague's "implied towers" and the architectural detail that adorns its buildings were decisive factors in his design. The fluidity of the riverfront facade smooths the transition between its seven stories and the five stories of neighboring buildings. Moving up and down and projecting away from the facade, the windows take on a distinctive presence in a manner first seen in the original 1977–78 renovation of the Gehry Residence in Santa Monica. Striated patterning further enhances the rhythmic effect across the concrete surface. The "body language" of the two towers earned the building its nickname, "Fred and Ginger”. Resting lightly atop slender animated columns, the glass-clad tower—its pinched waist minimizing obstructions to the river view from the adjacent building—leans in toward the cylindrical tower. Urbanistically, the towers play the important role of anchoring the public square and forging a connection to the bridge.

The belief that "architecture is art" has been a part of Frank Gehry's being for as long as he can remember. In fact, when asked if he had any mentors or idols in the history of architecture, his reply was to pick up a Brancusi photograph on his desk, saying, "Actually, I tend to think more in terms of artists like this. He has had more influence on my work than most architects. In fact, someone suggested that my skyscraper that won a New York competition looked like a Brancusi sculpture. I could name Alvar Aalto from the architecture world as someone for whom I have great respect, and of course, Philip Johnson."

For Frank Gehry, like most architects, the art of building is a serious and searching business. He pursues his muse with love and frustration, with a sense of discovery in each undertaking, and an exceptional set of skills. At a time when retro reigns, he follows the modernist route of an original vision that postmodern traditionalists have tried so hard to give a bad name. He takes chances; he works close to the edge; he pushes boundaries beyond previous limits. There are times when he misses the mark, and times when the breakthrough achieved alters everyone else's vision as well. And he believes, as most architects do, that it is always the next project that will realize his aims and ideals his own.

For those that work this way – exploring levels of philosophy and practice that renew both the spirit and meaning of an ancient art – there is a quiet, but genuine joy that is the architect's secret elixir. Delight breaks through constantly; there are no gloomy Gehry buildings. One cannot think of anything he has done that doesn’t make one smile. There are the fish, as pure sculpture or useful objects, ornamental or occupied, luminous or glistening, a piscine preoccupation that has led to lamps, anthromorphic restaurants and skyscraper towers. There is the furniture of corrugated cardboard, a welcoming old shoebox presence, ingratiatingly paper-pompous and comfortably user-friendly. There is wit, but no fashionable in-jokes or one-liners; these are light and lively designs and buildings that lift the spirit with revelations of how the seemingly ordinary can become extraordinary by acts of imagination that turn the known into new configurations that engage the mind and eye, that explore unexpected definitions of use and style. For Frank Gehry, these explorations characteristically take place at the point where architecture and sculpture meet in anxious and uneasy confrontation; this is the difficult, dangerous and uncharted area that he has made his own. That he has reconciled art and utility in a handsome, workable and intensely personal synthesis of form and function is his singular achievement. Gehry's work takes architecture a significant step farther as an evolving, challenging and creative art!

Bibliography:

Contemporary California Houses : Frank Gehry, Schnabel House ; Eric Owen Moss, Lawson-Westen House ; Franklin D. Israel, Drager House (Architecture) by James Steele, et al (Hardcover - September 1999)
Frank Gehry by Naomi Stungo, Frank O. Gehry (Hardcover - May 2000)
Gehry Talks by Mildred S. Friedman (Editor), et al (Hardcover - October 1999)
Art and Architecture: A Dialogue by Frank O. Gehry, et al (Paperback - August 1999)