Frank Gehry

One of the most important architects of the 20th and 21st centuries, Frank Gehry is considered a pioneer of Deconstructivism, a movement that exploded the tenets of Modernist architecture, replacing its geometry and rational order with fragmented forms and fluid, non-rectilinear shapes. During his early career, Gehry worked in the International Style established by the Bauhaus and the pioneering French architect Le Corbusier, but was increasingly drawn to the avant-garde communities emerging in California in the 1960s and ’70s. “I think the blurring of the lines between art and architecture has got to happen,” he once said. He began to build furniture from industrial corrugated cardboard and used rough industrial materials such as chain link fencing and aluminium to create more expressive elements in his architectural work. An increasing playfulness of style lead to the design for Gehry’s most iconic building, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (1997), whose sweeping curves of titanium are echoed in Gehry’s downtown L.A. building, the Walt Disney Concert Hall (2003).