A few weeks ago Frank Gehry commented on how he dreamed of the design of the building that is finished in Paris, "a magnificent ship that symbolises the cultural vocation of France," the building made for the Louis Vuitton Foundation, is clearly a jeweler, exquisite, complex and expensive, to house exceptional works of art, which has just been completed and is awaiting its inauguration which will be next October, when its interior refurbishment is completed.

His project for Louis Vuitton, of course, is a show that brings together the whole range of the architect's methods, aesthetic codes and modes of expression, while at the same time he seems to want to represent a new stage in his work. The titanium plates were relegated and the use of glass was stressed to give life to his vision of a building that wanted to be light, luminous, designed to stand out and stand out against a green background, the Jardin d'Acclimatation in the Bois de Boulogne, a park from the end of the 19th century.

This week the architect achieved the same singularity and outstanding recognition for himself, with the awarding of the Prince of Asturias Prize for the Arts.

Exemplary.

The singularisation achieved by the awarding of the prize was surprising, if we understand the prizes as exemplary acknowledgements that a society grants to highlight a specific work or trajectory as a reference. In a time of doubts, in which now more than ever and in view of the consequences of the crisis, the positions on what architecture should be and what its role is in our society are closer to its social function than to its iconic representation, the surprise at the dubious exemplarity of the prize was evident in the doubts of the jury when it expressed itself in making its decision public.

"Like all prizes, this one has a problem and that is that when someone wins, they deserve it and an act of justice is committed, but also one of great injustice to others," said the president of the Spanish Film Academy, Enrique González Macho. For her part, Benedetta Tagliabue commented "There are many colleagues to defend", referring to the architects who opt for the award. He acknowledged, however, that the jury tends to "vary" the discipline awarded and since in 2012 was awarded to architect Rafael Moneo and "there are many arts", among his preferences were candidates dedicated to music, film and theater. Elena Ochoa, the wife of architect Norman Foster, who won the award at the time, was also more inclined towards the visual arts.

The subsequent statements made by two of the previous winners, Norman Foster and Rafael Moneo, were sharper and more committed, making a clear, explicit and undoubted recognition of the Canadian architect.

If architecture were only art, plastic expression, individual and visual, over and above its social values and its condition of necessity, something whose knowledge did not depend on society, then it is clear that the prize was right.

End or continuity.

From Santa Monica, in Los Angeles, Gehry admitted his special gratitude for the awarding of the Prize and with it the importance that the construction of the Guggenheim in Bilbao had signified in his career, well above the value of the Pritzker Prize that he had won a decade earlier in 1989. The prizes can be a launching springboard at certain times, but they can also mean a period and end in a career (something of this seemed to happen at the San Fernando Academy, a few weeks ago with the presentation of Baldeweg, Moneo and Bohigas, where you could see reflected the discomfort with which they expressed themselves and seemed to recognize each other in the videos that motivated the act), so Gehry was quick to point out "Let it be clear that I continue working".

Trajectory.

The trajectory of one of the most popular architects in recent decades has always been presented from his condition as an individual figure, made to himself. Always presented as the son of Canadian immigrants, Frank Owen Goldberg was born in 1929 in Toronto (Canada), adopting American nationality after moving to Los Angeles with his parents in 1947.

In 1954 he graduated as an architect. His immigrant status is not something that is only told in historiographies, it is something that he also uses systematically, and thus he expressed himself talking about the importance of building a skyscraper like the Beekman Apartment Tower, in Manhattan "the city where my father arrived as an immigrant".

No one can deny that Frank Owen Goldberg's trajectory has been unique even in his name. Whether it's because he comes from a Jewish family and feels discriminated against as a child in Toronto (his Jewish status has been something he has used to explain different episodes of his life, such as Moneo's hand kiss in the Cathedral of Los Angeles, for which he said he lost the commission), or because in Los Angeles he quickly understood that to succeed one of the first conditions is to have an artistic name to break through or simply because he did it coinciding with the acquisition of nationality, at 25, the reality is that he changed the name, to become Frank Gehry.

A trajectory that he has been modelling even with films like the one directed by his friend the director Sydney Pollack in the year.

 

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Frank Owen Gehry, was born in 1929 in Toronto (Canada), but adopted American nationality after moving to Los Angeles in 1947 with his parents. He graduated in Architecture in 1954 from the University of Baja California and began working in the studio of Victor Gruen. After completing his military service, he studied Urban Planning at Harvard and returned to Gruen’s office. He moved to Paris in 1961 with his wife and two daughters, where he worked for a year with André Rémondet. In 1962, he opened his own studio –Frank O. Gehry and Associates– in Los Angeles, from which he has worked on projects in America, Europe and Asia for five decades now.

He rose to prominence in the 70s for his buildings with sculptural forms that combine unusual industrial materials such as titanium and glass. During this same period, he began to develop a role as a designer of furniture with his Easy Edges collection, conceived as a low-cost range comprising fourteen pieces made out of cardboard, subsequently followed by the more artistic range, Experimental Edges. Since the late 80s, the name of Frank Gehry has been associated with the deconstructionist movement, characterized by fragmentation and the rupture of a linear design process, resulting in buildings with a striking visual appearance. The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (1997) and the Nationale-Nederlanden building in Prague (1996), known as the Dancing House, may be considered among the most prominent examples of this formal language. Likewise noteworthy among his works are the Aerospace Museum of California (1984), the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany (1989), the Frederick Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis (1993), the DZ Bank building in Berlin (1998), the Gehry Tower in Hannover (2001), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Stata Center in Cambridge (2003), the Walt Disney Concert Hall (2003) and the Maggie's Centre in Dundee, Scotland (2003). Gehry has also worked on a museum of contemporary art in Paris for the Louis Vuitton Foundation, the design of his first playground in New York, at the southern tip of the island of Manhattan known as The Battery, and the remodelling and recovery of Mayer Park in Lisbon, which included the restoration of the Capitolio Theatre. In Spain, 2006 saw the opening of the Herederos del Marqués de Riscal winery in Elciego (Álava), and he has also designed the Sagrera Tower in Barcelona.

His work has been the subject of numerous case studies and, in 2006, the film director Sydney Pollack released the documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry, presented at Cannes. In that same year, he presented his project for the new Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi. In 2008, he designed the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in Hyde Park, London. The first residential building in Asia designed by Gehry, the Opus Hong Kong tower, was opened in 2012. He is currently working on the design of the Eisenhower Memorial to be built in Washington; on the West Campus that Facebook is to build in Menlo Park, California and on the project of a residential tower in Berlin, which will become the tallest skyscraper in the city.

His designs have received over one hundred awards around the world. Noteworthy among the distinctions he has received are more than a dozen honorary degrees, the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize (USA, 1977), the Pritzker Prize (1989), the Wolf Prize in Arts (Israel, 1992), the Praemium Imperiale (Japan, 1992), the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (1994), the Friedrich Kiesler Prize (Austria, 1998), and the Twenty Five Year Award from the American Institute of Architects (2012). He also holds the National Medal of Arts (USA, 1998), the Lotos Medal of Merit (USA, 1999), the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects (1999), and the Royal Gold Medal for the promotion of architecture (2000), awarded by the Queen of England. Gehry has been a member of the Pritzker Prize Jury and of institutions such as the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the US National Design Academy and the Royal Academy of Arts.

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Gehry Partners, LLP. The Gehry Partners team on the Battersea project is headed by Craig Webb and Brian Aamoth. Gehry Partners, LLP is a full service architectural firm with extensive international experience in the design and construction of academic, museum, theater, performance, commercial, and master planning projects.

Founded in 1962 and located in Los Angeles, California, Gehry Partners currently has a staff of approximately 125 people. Every project undertaken by Gehry Partners has Frank Gehry personally involved. Frank is supported by the broad resources of the firm and the extensive experience of the firm’s senior partners and staff. On Battersea, the design team will be led by Craig Webb who has collaborated with Frank for over 20 years. Current projects include: Guggenheim Abu Dhabi; LUMA Foundation in Arles, France; Divan Orchestra in Berlin; Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, D.C.; King Street Development in Toronto, Ontario; Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia; Q-MOCA in Quanzhou, China; and West Campus for Facebook in Menlo Park, California. Projects under construction include the Puente de Vida Museum of Biodiversity in Panama; Foundation Louis Vuitton Museum in Paris, France and the Dr. Chau Chak Wing Building for the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.

Raised in Toronto, Canada, Frank Gehry moved with his family to Los Angeles in 1947. He received his Bachelor of Architecture degree from USC in 1954, and studied city planning at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He founded Gehry Partners, LLP, in Los Angeles in 1962, a full-service architectural firm that developed extensive international experience in the design and construction of academic, museum, theater, performance and commercial projects.

Hallmarks of Mr. Gehry’s work include a concern that people dwell comfortably within the spaces that he creates, and an insistence that his buildings address the context and culture of their sites.

Despite his international stature and renown, he continues to be closely associated with Los Angeles, where his 1978 redesign of his Santa Monica home launched his international career.

“Frank holds a special place in his art for the work of contemporary artists. He was a central figure in the contemporary art world in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 70s, working closely with Billy Al Bengston, Larry Bell, John Altoon, Bob Irwin, Ed Moses, Ed Ruscha and Ken Price. And he continues to work closely with artists, including Claes Oldenburg and Jeff Koons, for whom he has collaborated on deeply sensitive installations of their work,” said Cuno. “Given his contributions to architecture, and the Getty’s extensive research and collections in Los Angeles art and architecture at the mid-century and beyond, and the commitment of the Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Foundation, and the Getty Research Institute to the conservation and study of modern architecture, it is fitting that we present Frank with our highest honor.”

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José Juan Barba (1964) architect from ETSA Madrid in 1991. Special Mention in the National Finishing University Education Awards 1991. PhD in Architecture ETSAM, 2004. He founded his professional practice in Madrid in 1992 (www.josejuanbarba.com). He has been an architecture critic and editor-in-chief of METALOCUS magazine since 1999, and he advised different NGOs until 1997. He has been a lecturer (in Design, Theory and Criticism, and Urban planning) and guest lecturer at different national and international universities (Roma TRE, Polytechnic Milan, ETSA Madrid, ETSA Barcelona, UNAM Mexico, Univ. Iberoamericana Mexico, University of Thessaly Volos, FA de Montevideo, Washington, Medellin, IE School, U.Alicante, Univ. Europea Madrid, UCJC Madrid, ESARQ-U.I.C. Barcelona,...).

Maître de Conférences IUG-UPMF Grenoble 2013-14. Full assistant Professor, since 2003 up to now at the University of Alcalá School of Architecture, Madrid, Spain. And Jury in competitions as Quaderns editorial magazine (2011), Mies van der Rohe Awards, (2010-2024), Europan13 (2015). He has been invited to participate in the Biennale di Venezia 2016 as part "Spaces of Exception / Spazi d'Eccezione".

He has published several books, the last in 2016, "#positions" and in 2015 "Inventions: New York vs. Rem Koolhaas, Bernard Tschumi, Piranesi " and collaborations on "Spaces of Exception / Spazi d'Eccezione", "La Mansana de la discordia" (2015), "Arquitectura Contemporánea de Japón: Nuevos territorios" (2015)...

Awards.-

- Award. RENOVATION OF SEGURA RIVER ENVIRONMENT, Murcia, Sapin, 2010.
- First Prize, RENOVATION GRAN VÍA, “Delirious Gran Vía”, Madrid, Spain, 2010.
- First Prize, “PANAYIOTI MIXELI Award”. SADAS-PEA, for the Spreading of Knowledge of Architecture Athens, 2005.
- First Prize, “SANTIAGO AMÓN Award," for the Spreading of Knowledge of Architecture. 2000.
- Award, “PIERRE VAGO Award." ICAC -International Committee of Art Critics. London, 2005.
- First Prize, C.O.A.M. Madrid, 2000. Shortlisted, World Architecture Festival. Centro de Investigación e Interpretación de los Ríos. Tera, Esla y Orbigo, Barcelona, 2008.
- First Prize. FAD AWARD 07 Ephemeral Interventions. “M.C.ESCHER”. Arquin-Fad. Barcelona, Sapin 2007.

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Published on: May 11, 2014
Cite: "Frank O. Gehry, a singular trajectory" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/frank-o-gehry-a-singular-trajectory> ISSN 1139-6415
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