Happy Birthday Frank Gehry

Get out your titanium-clad forks and get ready to Deconstruct the cake – Frank Gehry is 85 years old today.

Born in 1929, the internationally acclaimed architect has been headlining architectural news platforms since he established his Los Angeles practice in 1962 and remodeled his home in Santa Monica. Notorious for his expressive use of architectonic form (and its inflationary effect on project budgets), Gehry is best known for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, which fellow architect Philip Johnson once dubbed “the greatest building of our time.”

Gehry’s fresh criticality inspires and incites; his career long-commitment to the style of Deconstructivism, demonstrating that form mustn’t always express function, has revealed itself in titanium-clad undulating envelopes, perplexing volumes, and aesthetically discordant detailing.

His office continues to provoke professional discourse with innovative architectural projects. Among their more recent international commissions, the Los Angeles-based Gehry Partners, LLP is currently set to design Berlin’s tallest tower and the Facebook headquarters in New York City.

Upon awarding him the Pritzker Prize in 1989, the jury said it best: Gehry is “always open to experimentation… being bound neither by critical acceptance or his successes. His buildings are juxtaposed collages of spaces and materials that make users appreciative of both the theater and the backs-stage, simultaneously revealed.”