Conversations with Frank Gehry

Drawing on the most candid, revealing, and entertaining conversations from twenty years of interviews with Frank Gehry, Barbara Isenberg gives us an unprecedented, intimate portrait of our most influential architect. In addition, sketches, models, and computer images provided by Gehry--the majority in color--allow us to see how his buildings have come to fruition, step by step. Gehry's subjects range from his childhood--when he first built cities with chunks of wood--to his relationships with clients. He talks about architectural influences (including Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Rudolf Schindler) and describes what he has learned from Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Rauschenberg. He discusses his designs for the controversial $4 billion Brooklyn Atlantic Yards project, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the revitalization of Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, the Gehry Collection at Tiffany's, and ongoing projects in Toronto, Paris, Abu Dhabi, and elsewhere. He illuminates the creative process by which his ideas become landmark buildings, showing us early sketches for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, when the undulating curves were mere scribbles on a page. Conversations with Frank Gehry is essential reading for everyone interested in the art and craft of architecture, and for everyone fascinated by the most iconic buildings of our time, as well as the man and mind behind them.

Learning. Starting out ; Private Gehry's army ; Moving on ; Should an artwork have toilets?. Innovating. Gehry abroad ; Art monastery on the Mississippi ; Finally, a hero at home ; The Bilbao effect. Consolidating. Gehry at work ; Mixing it up with geniuses ; On-screen and at Tiffany's ; Dual coasts : Atlantic yards and Grand Avenue ; People in glass houses ; Gehry builds a doghouse ; Going home ; The architect aging