Learning from Frank Gehry

Buildings designed by the architect Frank Gehry (1929-2025), such as the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (1997), have gained wide public admiration as well as inspiring fellow designers. But equally noteworthy is his design philosophy: 'To design something that one would want to be a part of, something one would want to visit and enjoy in an attempt to improve one’s quality of life.' More specifically, Gehry considered architecture 'to be art' aiming at transferring the feelings of humanity through inert materials. Not surprisingly then, he greatly appreciated the visual arts, notably sculpture which influenced his architectural approach resulting in innovative and unconventional forms. In this, he experimented with industrial materials and methods, such as overlapping glass panels and titanium cladding. But key to Gehry's creativity was the role of preliminary dynamic sketches in generating design ideas (observing here too, for example, Paul Klee’s serpentine lines as the essence of creative thought). That is, he began the creative process with freeform sketching and modelling visualising what he had in mind and then turned the ideas into production-ready drawings and material form with the use of scanning processes and 3D modelling software. Gehry also took a keen interest in education encouraging students to always be curious, and let architecture open up to other subjects, such as philosophy, literature, and music. Furthermore, and although he resisted categorisation as an architect, despite recognisable deconstructivist architectural elements in his work, he advised students to study and learn from the greats, from Brunelleschi and Borromini to Le Corbusier and Zaha Hadid.