Product Description

This monograph is one of the most complete and visually attractive publications on world-renowned architect Frank Gehry, presenting 243 of his buildings and projects. Gehry's provocative works of architecture are constructed through a unique process of improvisation and display extreme creative freedom, which allows him to work without preconceptions, and with an extraordinarily open mind. This volume traces Gehry's career and creative development and includes all of his most significant works, from his senior thesis at the University of Southern California (1954) to a projected skyscraper in New York City (1997). Included are such high-profile projects as the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Loyola Law School, and the California Aerospace Museum in Los Angeles; the Nationale-Nederlanden office building in Prague; and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #683278 in Books
• Published on: 2003-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 614 pages

Amazon.com Review
Ever since his wildly dramatic Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, opened in 1997, Frank Gehry has been widely and justifiably considered the leading architect of our time. Although this ascension occurred seemingly overnight, it actually took more than half a century, counting architecture school and work in eight other offices before he opened his own firm in 1962. Since then, Gehry's designs have become increasingly freer and more inventive. He first explored existing design approaches such as Frank Lloyd Wright's, Southern California vernacular, minimalist modernism, and Miesian structuralism before blazing his own trail. This included corrugated cardboard furniture, chain-link fencing, unfinished metal siding, exposed wood studs, and other "cheapskate" materials; skewed geometries; and a recurring preoccupation with fishlike building forms. He learned to fragment buildings into discrete components (often making each room a structure unto itself), experiment with color, create forced perspectives, and, above all, bring natural light indoors masterfully. His recent designs tend to be baroque and romantic in ways never before seen, often resembling sails or abstracted flowers. Gehry's architecture is an art that involves great risk taking, and while not every design succeeds fully, his courage is exemplary and his batting average is surprisingly high.

For readers who truly want to know about Gehry, The Complete Works is indispensable. It documents 250 works, even early ones that other architects might conveniently omit, and the material is well illustrated on 614 oversized pages. Insightful essays by two eminent architectural scholars set the stage for this massive and unrivaled traversal of Gehry's designs. --John Pastier

About the Author
Francesco Dal Co is Director of Electa's architecture division and Professor of Architecture at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura in Venice. A renowned architecture historian and critic, he is also the editor of Casabella. He is the former Director of Architecture for the architecture section of the Venice Biennale. He is the author of many books, including The Modern City, Modern Architecture (with Manfredo Tafuri), Frank O. Gehry: The Complete Works (with Kurt W. Forster), and Tadao Ando, published by Phaidon. Kurt W. Forster is a distinguished professor and critic of architecture history. He was the founding director of the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities from 1983 to 1992, and thereafter taught at the Institute of History and Theory of Architecture (ETH) in Zurich and was assistant director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Born and educated in Zurich, he studied at the universities of Berlin, Munich, and Zurich. He taught at Yale University (1960-67), Stanford University (1967-82), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has curated major exhibitions and contributed essays on Alberti, Giulio Romano, Palladio, Schinkel, and Le Corbusier, as well as completed case studies of the architecture of Peter Eisenman, Daniel Libeskind, Frank Gehry, and Raphael Moneo. Author's/Photographer's Residence: Francesco Dal Co: Venice, Italy; Kurt W. Forster: Como, Italy.

Customer Reviews

A really good book for architects and everyone!
I like how this book shows how Gehry's architecture progressed from his Senior Thesis Project to his recent works. It's interesting how simple his architecture once was, to how much more complex it is now. Buy this book, you will always enjoy it.

An architectural historian's delight
For some time, Gehry's architecture has astonished and exasperated architectural critics, but it is his bizarre concrete-steel-limestone-titanium-and-glass Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain (1997) that has brought his eccentric fantasies to the attention of a broader public. The short, critical essays in this book, one by the noted architectural historian Kurt Forster and the other by Italian architectural critic Franceco dal Co, will not help the reader understand the complex of ideas that lies behind Gehry's work; but Hadley Arnold's 517-page catalog that traces Gehry's work from his senior thesis project at the University of California (1954) to his One Times Square proposal (1997) is an architectural historian's delight, with hundreds of plans and color illustrations of models, projects, and completed works. There is also a "Project Register" that provides a year-by-year synopsis of Gehry's work, a biography that includes Gehry's awards and prizes, and a 21-page bibliography. This book is the perfect introduction to Gehry's work, and it will be an essential purchase for all libraries that support either an undergraduate or graduate program in architecture. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals. E. Van Schaack, formerly Colgate University

Frank O. Gehry:The Complete Works by Francesco Dal Co, et al
Architecture is my first love although I am a Art History Major. So without any dobt I knew this publication would be right up my ally. To say the least I was not dissappointed. A brief, illustrated synopsis was given on all projects right up to the current "Music Experience" extravaganza. One point I found of particular interest was that in most of the Bios it gave the Budget that Gehry had to work in. It is a massive book and printed on top quality stock. One that will last a lifetime in my Library. It is a book worthy of any one interested in cutting edge design. Although alot of the projects are in Europe as they seem to be more accepting of his progressive designs the commissioned works in America are just as fine. I can only anticipate the "New Guggenheim"in New York.