frank gehry

Fulfiller of fantasies

At the age of 88, Frank Owen Gehry’s position at the apex of the modern architectural scene is uncontested. The man who redefined public architecture, reinvented shape-making and rewired architectural technology so that his artistic visions could be realised, Gehry is both a true original and a bona fide establishment player. Our October 2014 issue featured a double header with Jean Nouvel, making it a remarkable document of the time two of architecture’s biggest names shared a stage.

For Wallpaper*, Gehry deconstructed our logo with a flourish of torn paper and the judicious placement of light (we fantasised of a future Wallpaper* HQ – pipe dreams, as it transpired). Inside, the focus was on the imminent arrival of the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, with a full photographic portfolio and design critic Alice Rawsthorn waxing lyrical on the project’s gestation. ‘I’d never had a client like Bernard Arnault before,’ Gehry told her of the LVMH CEO. ‘He gave me a lot of freedom to design the building, but expressed his opinions as we did it.’ Elsewhere, Yale’s Kurt W Foster cut a swathe through the chaos and complexity of the Gehry Archive, from where form evolves out of a primordial swamp of twisted cardboard and tangled sketches.

In the three years, Gehry’s works have included Facebook’s California HQ and the ongoing half-billion dollar extension to Philadelphia’s Museum of Art. In the UK, his apartment complex at the Battersea Power Station development is also well under way.