Overview
An unprecedented, intimate, and richly illustrated portrait of Frank Gehry, one of the world’s most influential architects. Drawing on the most candid, revealing, and entertaining conversations she has had with Gehry over the last twenty years, Barbara Isenberg provides new and fascinating insights into the man and his work.Gehry’s subjects range from his childhood—when he first built cities with wooden blocks on the floor of his grandmother’s kitchen—to his relationships with clients and his definition of a “great” client. We learn about his architectural influences (including Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright) and what he has learned from Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Rauschenberg.
We explore the thinking behind his designs for the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the redevelopment of Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn and Grand Avenue in Los Angeles, the Gehry Collection at Tiffany’s, and ongoing projects in Toronto, Paris, Abu Dhabi, and elsewhere. And we follow as Gehry illuminates the creative process by which his ideas first take shape—for example, through early drawings for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, when the building’s trademark undulating curves were mere scribbles on a page. Sketches, models, and computer images provided by Gehry himself allow us to see how so many of his landmark buildings have come to fruition, step by step.
Conversations with Frank Gehry is essential reading for everyone interested in the art and craft of architecture, and for everyone fascinated by the most iconic buildings of our time, as well as the man and the mind behind them.
Synopsis
An unprecedented, intimate, and richly illustrated portrait of Frank Gehry, one of the world’s most influential architects. Drawing on the most candid, revealing, and entertaining conversations she has had with Gehry over the last twenty years, Barbara Isenberg provides new and fascinating insights into the man and his work.
Gehry’s subjects range from his childhood—when he first built cities with wooden blocks on the floor of his grandmother’s kitchen—to his relationships with clients and his definition of a “great” client. We learn about his architectural influences (including Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright) and what he has learned from Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Rauschenberg.
We explore the thinking behind his designs for the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the redevelopment of Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn and Grand Avenue in Los Angeles, the Gehry Collection at Tiffany’s, and ongoing projects in Toronto, Paris, Abu Dhabi, and elsewhere. And we follow as Gehry illuminates the creative process by which his ideas first take shape—for example, through early drawings for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, when the building’s trademark undulating curves were mere scribbles on a page. Sketches, models, and computer images provided by Gehry himself allow us to see how so many of his landmark buildings have come to fruition, step by step.
Conversations with Frank Gehry is essential reading for everyone interested in the art and craft of architecture, and for everyone fascinated by the most iconic buildings of our time, as well as the man and the mind behind them.
The New York Times - Martin Filler
Isenberg…offers worthwhile new information for architecture devotees and an engaging introduction for general readers.
Editorials
Martin Filler
Isenberg…offers worthwhile new information for architecture devotees and an engaging introduction for general readers.—The New York Times
Publishers Weekly
With such signature buildings as the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Disney Center in Los Angeles, Frank Gehry has been called "the most famous architect in the world." These conversations, edited from interviews California-based writer Isenberg (Making It Big) began with Gehry in the 1980s, cover topics from his first buildings-made as a boy from chips of firewood on his grandmother's floor-to current large-scale projects like a $3 billion redesign for Grand Avenue in downtown L.A. There is talk about the architectural politics of Los Angeles and the practical aspects of running a large architectural office. And while Gehry never name-drops, readers do get a sense of the celebrity and high-finance crowds in which he circulates. Gehry says he has always been more influenced by artists than by other architects, and those influences range from such friends as Robert Rauschenberg to Vermeer and Hieronymus Bosch. Whether designing jewelry or museums, he sketches constantly and his assistants build dozens of models before reaching a final design. Illustrations of these preliminary steps and of realized buildings add a visual component to the wide-ranging and informative conversations. 165 color and 41 b&w illus. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Library Journal
In the 1990s, Frank Gehry established himself as one of the greatest architects of all time, with the completion of his celebrated and spectacular Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. Since then, he has surmounted this achievement with stupendous success, in terms of both the quality and the quantity of his commissions all over the world. This book of interviews is absolutely fascinating-for the general public, fans, historians, and scholars alike. It brings together in one book a series of candid interviews that the accomplished Isenberg recorded between 2004 and 2008, embracing Gehry's entire life and career, comprising a kind of verbal autobiography. Gehry emerges in this self-portrait as a man of flesh and blood: unusually humble, painstakingly ethical, and frankly thrilled with the exciting prospects of modern art and architecture. This very accessible, readable volume will be a gold mine for scholars and the general public for generations.
—Peter S. Kaufman