2. FACT FILE
Born Frank Owen
Goldberg
February 28, 1929
Toronto, Ontario,
Canada
Nationality Canadian,
American
Alma mater University of Southern
California
Occupation Architect
Practice Gehry Partners, LLP
4. Career
Gehry established his practice in Los Angeles in 1962,
which eventually became the Gehry partnership in 2001.
Gehry's earliest commissions were all in Southern California,
where he designed a number of relatively small-scale yet
innovative commercial structures
In 1989, Gehry was awarded the Pritzker Architecture
Prize. The jury cited Gehry as "Always open to
experimentation, he has as well a sureness and maturity
that resists, in the same way that Picasso did", being
bound either by critical acceptance or his successes. His
buildings are juxtaposed collages of spaces and materials
that make users appreciative of both the theatre and the
back-stage, simultaneously revealed.
5. Buildings
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao,
Walt Disney Concert Hall,
Gehry Residence,
Louis Vuitton Foundation,
8 Spruce Street,
Weisman Art Museum,
Dancing House,
Art Gallery of Ontario,
EMP Museum,
Cinémathèque française,
Biomuseo,
Ohr-O'Keefe Museum Of Art
6. Much of Gehry's work falls within the style
of Deconstructivism, which is often
referred to as Post-structuralist in nature for
its ability to go beyond current modalities of
structural definition. This can be seen in
Gehry's house in Santa Monica
Gehry’s style at times seems unfinished or
even crude, but his work is consistent . Gehry
has been called "the apostle of chain-link
fencing and corrugated metal siding"
ARCHITECTURAL
STYLE
10. The Gehry Residence is architect Frank Gehry's own
house. It was originally an extension, designed by Gehry
and built around an existing Dutch colonial style house. It
makes use of unconventional materials, such as Chainlink
fences and corrugated steel. It is sometimes considered
one of the earliest deconstructivist buildings
Gehry residence
Gehry actually did keep the existing house almost
completely in tact, but not in a conventional manner. The
Dutch colonnial home was left in tact and the new house
was built around it. Holes were made, walls were stripped,
torn down and put up, and the old quiet house became a
loud shriek of contemporary style among the neighboring
mansions–literally.
14. General information
Location 111 South Grand Avenue
Los Angeles, California U.S.A.
Coordinates 34°03′19″N 118°15′00″W
Public transit Civic Center/Grand Park
(Regional Connector future)
Owner Los Angeles Music Center
Type Concert hall
Seating type Reserved
Capacity 2,265
Built 1999–2003
Opened October 24, 2003
Construction cost $130 million (plus $110 million for parking garage)
15. Disney Concert Hall
The hall is in a vineyard seating configuration, similar to
the Berliner Philharmonie by Hans Scharoun.
Lillian Disney made an initial gift of $50 million in 1987 to
build a performance venue as a gift to the people of Los
Angeles and a tribute to Walt Disney's devotion to the arts
and to the city. The Frank Gehry-designed building
opened on October 24, 2003.
Performers and critics agreed that it was well worth this
extra time taken by the time the hall opened to the public.
[5] During the summer rehearsals a few hundred VIPs
were invited to sit in including donors, board members and
journalists. Writing about these rehearsals, Los Angeles
Times
16. The walls and ceiling of the hall are finished with Douglas-fir
while the floor is finished with oak. Columbia Showcase &
Cabinet Co. Inc., based in Sun Valley, CA, produced all of the
ceiling panels, wall panels and architectural woodwork for the
main auditorium and lobbies. The Hall's reverberation time is
approximately 2.2 seconds unoccupied and 2.0 seconds
occupied.
After the construction, modifications were made to the
Founders Room exterior; while most of the building's
exterior was designed with stainless steel given a matte
finish, the Founders Room and Children's Amphitheater
were designed with highly polished mirror-like panels. The
reflective qualities of the surface were amplified by the
concave sections of the Founders Room walls. Some
residents of the neighboring condominiums suffered glare
caused by sunlight that was reflected off these surfaces
and concentrated in a manner similar to a parabolic
mirror.