Frank Owen Gehry, CC, FAIA (/ˈɡɛəri/; born Frank Owen Goldberg; (1929 -02-28)February 28, 1929) is a Canadian-born American architect, residing in Los Angeles.
My father always told me that I was going to be a failure - I think he was more talking about himself, but I didn't know it at the time.
When I start my class I ask the students to write their signatures on pieces of paper and put them on a table. I have them look at them, and I point out, "They're all different, aren't they? That's you, that's you, that's you, that's you. "
Picasso could use everyone's paintings and transform them into his own. He was using ideas from all of his contemporaries.
We live and work in boxes. People don't even notice that.
I hate the word starchitect. Stuff like that comes from mean-spirited, untalented journalists. It's demeaning.
As much as we pretend otherwise, we want what's comfortable, and we're afraid of the different. We're afraid of change.
Everybody's an artist. Unfortunately we don't treat them as such.
Architecture and any art can transform a person, even save someone. It can for children - for anyone. It still does for me.
I don't know whose box I'm in, and I don't really care.
When you were a kid, if you went to the Montreal Forum or a hockey game at Maple Leaf Gardens, which I did, there was a great feeling. The new stadiums don't have it. Why don't they have it? Building codes.
Liquid architecture. It's like jazz - you improvise, you work together, you play off each other, you make something, they make something. And I think it's a way of - for me, it's a way of trying to understand the city, and what might happen in the city.
When I was a child I could do math and art, so I had left- and right-brain capabilities. But I've seen my children, who are more right-brained, struggling. My son was told he wouldn't make it to college, but he dogged it through and ended up being accepted by 10 major art schools after the high school advisor said, "Please don't apply. You're going to be disappointed. " That kid's an artist now.
If you know where it's going, it's not worth doing.
If the general public demanded better, they'd get better, because the marketplace responds to the public's needs and desires.
Each project, I suffer like I'm starting over again in life. There's a lot of healthy insecurity that fuels this stuff.
There are a great many things about architecture that are hidden from the untrained eye.
I never said I was opposed to the LEED program or to green building - I'm not.
I don't know why people hire architects and then tell them what to do.
Architecture is a small piece of this human equation, but for those of us who practice it, we believe in its potential to make a difference, to enlighten and to enrich the human experience, to penetrate the barriers of misunderstandin g and provide a beautiful context for life's drama.
What I have learned about museum buildings is that buildings have to have iconic presentations. The position of the art museum vis-a-vis other civic buildings needs to be hierarchal in the community. It has to be equal to the library and the courthouse.