Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry is Paul Goldberger's full-length critical biography of the architect behind the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall—a portrait of the person and an assessment of the buildings in equal measure.
About This Book
Goldberger follows Gehry from a working-class Jewish immigrant family in Toronto to the very top of his profession. Los Angeles is central to the story: a city receptive to outsider artists, it shaped Gehry decisively in his formative years and gave him the latitude to develop a language of his own. The book moves across the whole body of work—from the house in Santa Monica that unsettled its neighbours to the international landmarks that made his name—while reading closely the persona Gehry cultivated, easygoing on the surface and intensely driven beneath it. Goldberger also treats Gehry's embrace of digital technology as more than a formal story, arguing that it changed not just how his buildings look but how architecture itself is practised.
Key Features
- A critical biography by a Pulitzer Prize–winning architecture critic, formerly of The New York Times and The New Yorker
- Balances life story with sustained critical analysis of the buildings
- Covers the full range of Gehry's work, from Los Angeles to Bilbao
- Narrative nonfiction written for general readers as much as for architects
What You'll Discover
- How Gehry's upbringing as the son of working-class immigrants in Toronto shaped his ambition
- The part Los Angeles and its art world played in forming his architectural sensibility
- The story of his own house in Santa Monica and the reaction it provoked
- How a carefully crafted public persona sat alongside a fierce drive to succeed
- How Gehry's use of technology transformed both the look of his buildings and the practice of architecture
About the Author
Paul Goldberger began his career at The New York Times, where his writing on architecture earned him the Pulitzer Prize for criticism, and went on to serve for 15 years as architecture critic of The New Yorker. A contributing editor at Vanity Fair, he is also the author of Why Architecture Matters and Ballpark: Baseball in the American City, among other books. He teaches at the New School and lives in New York City.
Specifications
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 544
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9780307946393
- Publisher: Knopf
- Dimensions: 24 x 16 cm
Perfect For: Architects, students and readers drawn to Gehry's buildings who want to understand the person behind them, and anyone who enjoys architectural biography and criticism.