Frank Gehry Bent The Rules Of Building Design By Creating Freely

Before Frank Gehry decided to start a career in architecture, he thought it would be interesting to become an engineer. But it just took one visit to a lab for Gehry to decide he was flat wrong.

Gehry, born as Frank Owen Goldberg, saw how successful his cousin was in the field of chemical engineering. So, Gehry’s Toronto high school arranged a day at an industry professional’s lab.

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“But at the end of the day, the guy looked at me and said, ‘Frank, you didn’t get excited about anything. This profession is not for you,’” Gehry was quoted as saying in the book “Getting There” by Gillian Zoe Segal.

Ironically, while Gehry (1929-2025) spent time browsing career books at the school library, he once found a book on designing buildings. Gehry thought it seemed “so bloody boring.” But after more self-reflection, Gehry realized two important things. One, he enjoyed art and drawing. Two, Gehry knew deep inside that he wanted to succeed.

Frank Gehry: Dream, But Also Show Drive

These personality traits served the Canadian American very well. After years of study and apprenticeships, Gehry started his own architectural practice in Los Angeles in 1962.

He soon delivered a series of thought-provoking designs. They ranged from the Chiat/Day Building in Venice, Calif., famous for a gigantic binoculars statue serving as the facade, to his own home in Santa Monica, Calif. The Gehry residence featured materials including chain link fencing, sheets of corrugated metal and plywood.

Gehry later took on larger, more complex projects, including a furniture museum in Germany and an art museum in Minneapolis, Minn. He also created the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in San Pedro, Calif. and Santa Monica Place, a vast indoor-and-outdoor mall and mecca of shops and restaurants. But the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in southern Spain, which opened in 1997, raised Gehry to global-star status in architecture.

Why? Gehry used 33,000 separate titanium panels to create an external frame made of curving lines and curious shapes that seemed to defy logic for a metal material. Yet the bold expression made Guggenheim Bilbao as easy to recognize as such landmarks as the Egyptian pyramids, the Eiffel Tower of Paris, and Sydney Opera House facing the bay in southern Australia.

“Though at times he rejected the label, Gehry was widely considered one of the faces of Deconstructivism, a postmodern architecture movement that burgeoned in the 1980s, characterized by fragmentation and an absence of the symmetry, continuity and harmony of Modernism,” Anne Steele wrote in a Wall Street Journal obituary in the paper’s Dec. 6-7, 2025, issue.

Seek Exquisite Form, Everlasting Function

Gehry knew how a building could elevate an institution and city. The wildly imaginative exterior powered the Guggenheim Bilbao’s interior as a nexus of culture and art.

The 24,000-square-foot property houses 19 separate galleries. Bilbao hosts 9,000 square feet of exhibition space. Viewed from above, some critics say the titanium, glass and limestone structure looks like a giant metal flower. Sunlight drenches the airy central atrium by day. Curved walkways inside give visitors the pleasant feeling of exploring a gentle indoor maze.

“The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, with its gleaming titanium curves, became a global icon not just for its art but for the city itself, sparking the phenomenon known as the ‘Bilbao Effect’ and showing that architecture could drive cultural and economic revival,” Bill Zahner, another pioneering architect in the field of employing metals in building construction and design, wrote on the A. Zahner website.

Titanium also proved an ingenious material. It not only reflects light. The metal’s warm color tone gave Bilbao a shimmering effect from close-up or from a distance.

Following the Bilbao museum’s success, Gehry sculpted more landmark buildings. They include the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle in 2000 and Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, whose exterior is made of stainless steel, in 2003. He also designed the Fondation Louis Vuitton museum of modern art in the outskirts of Paris.

In addition to winning the Pritzker Prize, the Nobel Prize equivalent in architecture, in 1989, Gehry received the Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture in 1994. He snagged the National Medal of Arts in 1998. In 2016, President Barack Obama awarded Gehry the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his achievements in architecture’s postmodernism era.

Find Inspiration From Challenge Like Gehry

Gehry’s drive to succeed arose watching his family struggle.

His father, Ephraim Owen Goldberg, was born in Toronto on Feb. 28, 1929. His father sold and serviced slot machines. According to Frank, his father didn’t make much money.

After suffering a heart attack, Gehry’s father moved the family to Los Angeles. The dad started anew as a truck driver for a soda company. Frank’s mother worked at a department store. Neither parent thought young Frank would it make it big in any line of work.

Gehry’s dad noted “I was a useless dreamer, with no business sense, and (he thought) that I wouldn’t amount to much,” Gehry said, adding his mother was equally critical as she “always thought I fell short. But I knew I was curious and had ambition.”

Gehry entered the workforce initially as a truck driver for a furniture company that sold breakfast nooks. He washed planes. Gehry also logged time at a cousin’s jewelry shop.

Focus On Education Like Gehry

At the same time, Gehry looked to advance in life with education.

Initially, he took free classes at Los Angeles City College. In a perspective drawing class, he initially got an F. That failing grade upset Gehry so much that he retook the class and came away with an A.

Eventually, Gehry earned his bachelor’s degree in architecture at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles in 1954. He also studied at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

Tap Technology To Innovate

In order to create something fresh and new, Gehry leaned on the innovative use of technology.

Designers in the aerospace industry use CATIA software. The acronym stands for computer-aided three-dimensional interactive application, created by Dassault Systems.

Gehry was one of the first in his field to apply this technology to custom-design each titanium plate for Guggenheim Bilbao. It gave Gehry precise data vital in fabricating each individual component.

Such software also helped Gehry create the stainless steel exterior of Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. Visitors can view the steel plates up close and marvel at their artistic dynamism. Each piece of steel breathes of complexity, irregularity and uniqueness. The hall stands in stark contrast to past buildings that emphasized square shapes and orthogonal, grid-like patterns.

Stick To Your Work Principles Like Gehry

In architecture, as in other professional services, Gehry lived this work ethic: You’re likely only as good as your last project.

Even during the heart of the pandemic, while in his early 90s, Gehry visited the Gehry Partners office in Playa Vista, Calif., just north of Los Angeles International Airport, for a few hours a few times a week.

In a Nov. 6, 2020, video interview with Milton Curry, dean of the USC School of Architecture, Gehry made no bones about his belief that architecture is a form of art that should not get sacrificed.

“You don’t have to eliminate the art. It doesn’t just become cheaper buildings that have to be done for developers, say, that have to avoid the art part. As you mention the word ‘art’ in those situations, you’ll probably get told, ‘We can’t afford that.’ The truth is they can, they do, and they did.”

Treat Clients Well

Yet Gehry made the additional point of advising young students in the field to never give any client the short shrift. He shared some advice from a former teacher at the school, Henry Burge, himself a professional architect.

“He said to me, ‘You’re very talented, you’re going to be someone. I want you to remember one thing. When you take a job, no matter how small or big it is, remember, you’ve got to do your best,’” Gehry said.

Gehry’s Keys

• Award winning architect known for bold designs. Designed the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, one of the most easily recognized auditoriums in the world and Guggenheim Bilbao Museum in southern Spain.
• Overcame: Numerous naysayers within his family and criticism from the public.
• Lesson: “Whenever someone comes to me with a new project, I’m always a little scared that I won’t know what to do. It seems like most creative people live with this kind of insecurity. It’s actually healthy because it helps the creative process and leads you to new places.”

Please follow Chung on X/Twitter: @saitochung_ and_ @IBD_DChung

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