Frank Gehry – a great architect in the modern world - Реферат

“Frank Gehry - a great architect in the modern world” G Aleksandra Group A-114 Contents 1. Early life 2. Education 3. Career 3.1 Awards and honor 3.2 Pritzker Architecture Prize 3.3 Academia 3.4 Exhibition design 3.5 Other designs 4. Style (destructivism) 5. Personal life 6. In popular culture 1. Early life Frank Owen Gehry Frank Owen Gehry - born Frank Owen Goldberg; February 28, 1929) is a Canadian-born American architect, residing in Los Angeles. He is one of the most famous people of the modern architecture, has designed some of the most iconic buildings of the past two decades and is known for his use of bold, postmodern shapes and unusual fabrications. Gehry was born Frank Owen Goldberg on February 28, 1929, in Toronto, Ontario, to parents Sadie Thelma and Irving Goldberg. His father was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Russian Jewish parents, and his mother was a Polish Jewish immigrant. He and his sister, Doreen, were raised in Timmins, a small mining town in eastern Ontario, by the extended Goldberg family. Father Irving was a former boxer who traveled selling pinball and slot machines. Sometimes Gehry would make sales calls with his father, which meant that he made frequent stops at bars at a very young age. In a Smithsonian magazine profile, he was quick to point out, But my mother took me to concerts and introduced me to art, so there was a balance. A creative child, he was encouraged by his grandmother, Leah Caplan, with whom he would build little cities out of scraps of wood. With these scraps from her husbands hardware store, she entertained him for hours, building imaginary houses and futuristic cities on the living room floor. His use of corrugated steel, chain link fencing, unpainted plywood and other utilitarian or everyday materials was partly inspired by spending Saturday mornings at his grandfathers hardware store. He would spend time drawing with his father, while his mother introduced him to the world of art. So the creative genes were there, Gehry says. But my father thought I was a dreamer, I wasnt gonna amount to anything. It was my mother who thought I was just reticent to do things. She would push me. Contrary to what some might think, he was uncertain about his career, in the beginning. He drove a delivery truck in order to support himself for various courses in Los Angeles City College. A young Ephraim Owen Goldberg with his parents, Irving and Thelma, at their home in Toronto, Canada. 2. Education He moved with his family to Los Angeles as a teenager in 1947 and later became a naturalized U.S. citizen. His father changed the family’s name to Gehry when the family immigrated. Uncertain of his career direction, the teenage Gehry drove a delivery truck to support himself while taking a variety of courses at Los Angeles City College. According to Gehry, I was a truck driver in L.A., going to City College, and I tried radio announcing, which I wasnt very good at. I tried chemical engineering, which I wasnt very good at and didnt like, and then I remembered. You know, somehow I just started wracking my brain about, What do I like? Where was I? What made me excited? And I remembered art, that I loved going to museums and I loved looking at paintings, loved listening to music. Those things came from my mother, who took me to concerts and museums. I remembered Grandma and the blocks, and just on a hunch, I tried some architecture classes. He took his first architecture courses on a hunch, and became enthralled with the possibilities of the art, although at first he found himself hampered by his relative lack of skill as a draftsman. Sympathetic teachers and an early encounter with modernist architect Raphael Soriano confirmed his career choice. He won scholarships to the University of Southern California and graduated in 1954 with a degree in architecture. After graduating from college, he spent time away from the field of architecture in numerous other jobs, including service in the United States Army. In the fall of 1956, he moved his family to Cambridge, where he studied city planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He left before completing the program, disheartened and underwhelmed. Gehrys left-wing ideas about socially responsible architecture were under-realized, and the final straw occurred when he sat in on a discussion of one professors secret project in progress-a palace that he was designing for right-wing Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista (1901-1973). 3. Career Gehry returned to Los Angeles to work for Victor Gruen Associates, who he had apprenticed for while at USC School of Architecture. In 1957 he was given the chance to design and construct his first private residence at the age of 28, with friend and old classmate Greg Walsh. Built in Idyllwild, California for his wife Anita’s family neighbor Melvin David, The David Cabin, shows features that were to become synonymous with later work. The over 2,000 sq ft (190 m2) mountain retreat has unique design features wi