Architect Frank Gehry Leaves Behind a Lasting Impact on the World of Architecture

Frank Gehry – who had an unparalleled talent for shaping forms, crumpling glass as if it were canvas, making it dance like a silhouette – will remain a lasting source of inspiration for Louis Vuitton, as well as all the Maisons within the LVMH group, he said in a statement. Critics accused Gehry of disregarding function in favor of form. His Disney Center was attacked by several critics as ‘a pile of smashed dishes,’ ‘a crazy fortune cookie,’ ‘deconstructivist rubbish,’ and ‘an emptied wastebasket.’ But he was not always so serene. While in Spain in October 2014 to receive an award, Gehry was questioned about criticisms that his work was too flashy. He raised his middle finger and said, ‘In this world we live in, 98% of everything that is built and designed today is pure shit. There’s no design sense, no respect for humanity or anything else. These damn buildings, and that’s it.’ ‘That’s what I remembered, years later, when I was struggling to figure out what I wanted to do with my life,’ he told The New Yorker magazine in 1977. ‘It made me think about architecture. It also gave me the idea that an adult could play.’ After graduating from the University of Southern California, Gehry went through a restless period. He worked at several architecture firms in Los Angeles, began studies at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design but dropped out without completing the program, served for a year in the US Army, and moved to Paris for a year. His standout project was, in 1978, the reconstruction of his own house in Santa Monica – transforming a pink Dutch colonial house into something fantastical with everyday materials like chain-link fences, corrugated aluminum, and unfinished plywood.