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Frank O. Gehry: The Complete Works
 
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Frank O. Gehry: The Complete Works [Hardcover]

Francesco Dal Co (Author), Kurt Forster (Author), Hadley Soutter Arnold (Author)
4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)


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Book Description

September 1, 1997
One of the world's great architects, Frank O. Gehry has produced an astonishing body of work over the past forty years. This pioneering designer continues to receive worldwide praise from both peers and critics as the most talented and influential architect working today. With the artistry of a sculptor and the brilliant articulation of an engineer, Gehry creates complex yet sensual buildings that are lyrical constructions defying categorization. Assembled by Francesco Dal Co and Kurt Forster, two of architecture's most important writers and historians, in collaboration with Gehry, this comprehensive, critical documentation -- the first major monograph ever published -- surveys his visionary architecture, from his early houses to his powerful recent works.

Bursting onto the scene in Southern California in the early 1960s, Gehry's revolutionary remodeling of his own house in 1978 -- the transformation of a suburban Dutch colonial into an architectural collage juxtaposing chain-link fence, plywood, exposed joists, and corrugated iron -- brought him international notoriety. His most important building to date, the recently completed Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain -- nearly twice the size of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris -- is a monumental 256,000-square-foot curvilinear masterpiece made of shimmering titanium, glass, and Spanish limestone.

This eagerly awaited and unprecedented publication -- with over three hundred projects and a thousand illustrations -- includes, among others, the controversial American Center in Paris; Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis; Nationale-Nedelanden Building (Fred and Ginger Building) in Prague; Vitra Headquarters in Weil am Rhein, Germany; California Aerospace Museum; Loyola Law School in Los Angeles; Chiat Day Mojo Building in Venice, California; and Boston Children's Museum. Also shown are his provocative designs for houses -- many of them in California -- as well as his installations, exhibitions, and ingenious corrugated cardboard furniture. Also presented is Gehry's largest U.S. commission to date, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, a cultural landmark and civic monument for his hometown of Los Angeles, which promises to change the concept of "public space" for generations to come.

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Editorial Reviews

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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, Italy's most renowned architectural historian and critic, teaches at the University Institute of Architecture of Venice, edits Casabella, and is the architectural editor for Electa. He has written and contributed to many books, including The American City, Modern Architecture (with Manfredo Tafuri), and The Monacelli Press titles Luis Barragán, Villa Ottolenghi, and Sverre Fehn.

Kurt W. Forster is founding director of the Getty Research Center for the History of Art and the Humanities and is professor of the history of art theory of architecture at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

Hadley Soutter Arnold writes frequently on architecture and design.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 616 pages
  • Publisher: The Monacelli Press; 1ST edition (September 1, 1997)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1885254636
  • ISBN-13: 978-1885254634
  • Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 10.3 x 2.3 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 7.8 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #835,068 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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Average Customer Review
4.9 out of 5 stars (11 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars An architectural historian's delight, April 26, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Frank O. Gehry: The Complete Works (Hardcover)
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
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A really good book for architects and everyone!, April 22, 2000
By 
M. Margolis (Upstate New York) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Frank O. Gehry: The Complete Works (Hardcover)
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.
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16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars insightful reference book, January 7, 2000
By 
Ping Lim (Christchurch) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Frank O. Gehry: The Complete Works (Hardcover)
This book is a must for Gehry-fan. Whilst I don't rever him like a God but I do admire his enormous talent & his willingness to experiment with materials in constructing buildings & furniture. In this book, you would get the feel that he's not merely an architect but also an artist. In other words, functionality & aesthetics blend harmoniously together. I particularly enjoy the latter part of the book where it displayed more of his famous works such as the Vitra office, Guggenheim Museum, etc. The first illustrations of his works are something that I can do without because they are works that any draughtsperson could produce. I suppose this book is a bibliography & therefore, it's essential for the readers to know of his humble beginning to understand his eventual greatness. Besides, with his new fame, abundant resources in the form of budget, technology, assistant staff also come in very handy as well. The book does omit the kettle project that Frank worked with Alessi, though. I'm looking forward to savour the 2nd edition of the book, if there's any.
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