Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry

Pulitzer-winning architecture critic Goldberger (Why Architecture Matters) finds no conflict between avant-garde aesthetics and practical buildings in this appreciative biography of celebrated architect Frank Gehry. Gehry’s low-key personality makes him a dull presence compared to his flamboyant designs. His early infatuation with grungy plywood and chain-link fencing as decorative elements led to the mature style of his acclaimed Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, a flagrantly non-Euclidean assemblage of warped, crumpled, billowing shapes sheathed in metal. The book’s drama comes from the struggle to superimpose these buildings over the misgivings of clients, civil engineers, and nonplussed neighbors. Goldberger defends Gehry against charges of being a capricious artiste foisting abstract sculpture on a baffled world; he paints the architect as a down-to-earth sort who designs eminently functional buildings that respond to their surroundings, exhibit continuity with the past, and embrace Earthlings despite looking like crashed spaceships. He contextualizes Gehry’s work with smart discussions of trends in Modernism and the Los Angeles art scene that inspired such trends, and offers his usual shrewd, evocative insights into the look and feel of buildings. Still, his apologia may not shake the reader’s impression that Gehry’s designs are more self-conscious than organic—studied attempts to blow people’s minds with weird-looking structures. Photos. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM. (Sept.)