Frank Gehry
"The great work of architectures expresses feeling. When you visit and see them there's a transfer of feeling from the artist, the architect, other time through the ages, to now.” - Frank Gehry
An internationally renowned architect, Frank Gehry lives and works in Los Angeles. His daring and poetic architectural style offers an approach that differs from the conventional construction of various buildings. Powerful, it toys with gravity, using volumes that create cloud-like forms. Innovative, it provokes visual ruptures that reinterpret perspectives. Narrative, it invents a futurist design that inspires surprise and emotion.
SCALE MODEL BY THE DOZEN
For each of his buildings, Frank Gehry is in the habit of producing a whole series of scale models. Made of wood, plastic and metal, they record every step of the project and help pave the way for the final model. For the architect, they are key to examining the different aspects of the building: how it relates to its site, interior spaces, volume measurement, etc. For the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Frank Gehry added large works of art in the galleries, essential markers of the layout of the spaces and of the presentation of museum exhibits. The "1:50 confirmation model" is an approval model, a link between physical representations and digital models.
THE USE OF AERONAUTICAL TECHNOLOGY TO BENEFIT ARTISTIC CREATION
Frank Gehry's creativity requires constant technical innovation. Both in the design of the concept itself and the approach to the construction work, the Fondation Louis Vuitton project turns the principles of architecture upside down. From the very first stages onwards, all the partners brought together for the project used a single tool: Digital Project, a software program developed by Gehry Technologies on the basis of the CATIA program created by Dassault Systèmes.
The exceptional performance of this program made possible the creation of complex shapes imagined by Frank Gehry, from the design of the building through to the assembly of the different elements on site. This required very close collaboration between the different teams working simultaneously with a common 3D model.
Biography
Frank Gehry
Raised in Toronto, Canada, Frank Gehry moved with his family to Los Angeles in 1947. He received his Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Southern California in 1954 and studied City Planning at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design before opening his own agency in Los Angeles in 1962.
In subsequent years, Gehry has built an architectural career that has spanned over six decades and produced public and private buildings in America, Europe and Asia. His work has earned Gehry several of the most significant awards in the architectural field, including the Pritzker Prize. Notable projects include Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California, USA; Eight Spruce Street Residential Tower in New York City, USA; Opus Residential Tower in Hong Kong; Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, France; the Dr. Chau Chak Wing Building for the University of Technology, in Sydney, Australia; the Louis Vuitton Maison Seoul, South Korea; the LUMA / Parc des Ateliers in Arles, France. Projects under construction include Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; Facebook Campus in Menlo Park, California, USA; the Grand Avenue Project in Los Angeles, California, USA; a new centre for the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA) in Inglewood, California, USA; the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington D.C., USA; and the Battersea Power Station Development in London, England.
Over the last forty years, Frank Gehry has been responsible for numerous major buildings, mainly in the United States and Europe. Among these are his own residence in Santa Monica, which acted as his professional manifesto, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the DZ Bank Building in Berlin, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the IAC Building and the New York Tower. He has taught for several years at Yale University. Moved by a permanent quest for innovation and meaning, in each of his projects, he pushes the boundaries of traditional architecture to create powerful, poetic buildings.
Training: University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles, and Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.
- 1979: Completion of his own residence in Santa Monica.
- 1993: Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis.
- 1996: The Dancing House, Prague.
- 1997: Opening of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.
- 2000: Received the Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects.
- 2001: First meeting with Bernard Arnault and first sketches of the Fondation building.
- 2003: Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and Vitra Museum in Weil-am-Rhein. In the same year, Frank Gehry received the Pritzker Prize for Architecture.
- 2006: Sydney Pollack paid tribute to him in his film Sketches of Frank Gehry.
- 2007: IAC Building, New York.
- 2011: New York Tower by Gehry2014: Fondation Louis Vuitton.
- 2012 : Opus Hong Kong, Hong Kong
- 2014 : Musée de la biodiversité, dans le quartier Amador de Panama.
- 2021 : Opening of the Luma Foundation in Arles.
