Frank Gehry is a famous Canadian-American architect known for his unique and bold designs.
Born in 1929 in Toronto he moved to Los Angeles in 1947 where he later studied architecture and city planning.
In 1962 he started his own firm. Gehry’s work including his renovated home in Santa Monica and cardboard furniture lines challenged traditional architecture and linked him to the deconstructivist and postmodern movements.
Gehry’s buildings like the Guggenheim Museum in Spain often resemble free-form sculptures and employ cutting-edge technology.
His work in the 21st century includes cultural institutions like the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago and the New World Center in Miami Beach.
His awards include the Pritzker Architecture Prize the Presidential Medal of Freedom and more.
While opinions on his radical designs vary Gehry’s work has made architecture a popular topic in America.
I have made a list of the best quotes by Frank Gehry.
Top 10 Frank Gehry Quotes
The best advice I’ve received is to be yourself. The best artists do that. ~ Frank Gehry.
Let the experience begin! ~ Frank Gehry.
For me, every day is a new thing. ~ Frank Gehry.
I found the material that people hated the most and used the most. So, I was going and try and see if I could play with it sculpturally. ~ Frank Gehry.
I never said I was opposed to the LEED program or to green building – I’m not. ~ Frank Gehry.
I love working. I don’t know what the word vacation means. ~ Frank Gehry.
You’ve got to bumble forward into the unknown. ~ Frank Gehry.
Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness. ~ Frank Gehry.
Each project, I suffer like I’m starting over again in life. There’s a lot of healthy insecurity that fuels this stuff. ~ Frank Gehry.
I would like to make a building as intellectually driven as it is sculptural and as positive as it would be acceptable to hope. ~ Frank Gehry.
Best Frank Gehry Quotes
I am obsessed with architecture. It is true, I am restless, trying to find myself as an architect and how best to contribute in this world filled with contradiction, disparity and inequality, even passion and opportunity. ~ Frank Gehry.
The culture of France is unique because it’s a culture that has a high priority on the arts, more than any other place in the world in our time since Greece. So as a practicing artist, if you will, this is home ground. They love us, so music, literature, art continues to be the center. ~ Frank Gehry.
I think my best skill as an architect is the achievement of hand-to-eye coordination. I am able to transfer a sketch into a model into the building. ~ Frank Gehry.
And I realized, when I’d come in to the meetings with these corrugated metal and chain link stuff, and people would just look at me like I’d just landed from Mars. But I couldn’t do anything else. That was my response to the people and the time. ~ Frank Gehry.
I used to sketch – that’s the way I thought out loud. Then they made a book of my sketches, and I got self-conscious, so now I don’t do it much. ~ Frank Gehry.
Your best work is your expression of yourself. ~ Frank Gehry.
You have to be optimistic. I still have doubts and conflicts, but the bottom line is, I believe in the future. ~ Frank Gehry.
Famous Frank Gehry Quotes
Man, there’s another freedom out there, and it comes from somewhere else, and that somewhere else is the place I’m interested in. ~ Frank Gehry.
You can’t ignore history; you can’t escape it even if you want to. You might as well know where you come from, and you might as well know that everything has been done in some shape or form. ~ Frank Gehry.
Some people may say my curved panels look like sails. Well, I am a sailor, so I guess I probably do use that metaphor in my work – though not consciously. ~ Frank Gehry.
The message I hope to have sent is just the example of being yourself. ~ Frank Gehry.
Architecture has always been a very idealistic profession. It’s about making the world a better place and it works over the generations because people go on vacation and they look for it. ~ Frank Gehry.
There are people who design buildings that are not technically and financially good, and there are those who do. Two categories – simple. ~ Frank Gehry.
If I knew where I was going, I wouldn’t do it. When I can predict or plan it, I don’t do it. ~ Frank Gehry.
I don’t think all buildings have to be iconic, but the history of the world has shown us that cultures build iconic buildings for their major public buildings. ~ Frank Gehry.
A well-designed home has to be very comfortable. I can’t stand the aesthetes, the minimal thing. I can’t live that way. My home has to be filled with stuff – mostly paintings, sculpture, my fish lamps, cardboard furniture, lots of books. ~ Frank Gehry.
Take what comes your way. Do the best with it. Be responsible as you can and something good will happen… ~ Frank Gehry.
I found myself starting architecture with a deep social, Jewish, liberal conscience, and the belief that architecture is for the people. It was a do-gooder base; I was born and raised that way. I was for blacks, whites, Italians, Poles, whatever. ~ Frank Gehry.
Powerful Frank Gehry Quotes
On certain projects, on big public projects, people definitely are interested in making them greener, but on smaller projects with tight budgets it can be harder. ~ Frank Gehry.
I don’t make things with my hands, although I studied woodworking and made furniture. ~ Frank Gehry.
If you know where it’s going, it’s not worth doing. ~ Frank Gehry.
I make a model of the site. There are some obvious things: where the entrance should be, where the cars have to go in. You start to get the scale of it. You understand the client’s needs, and what the client is hoping for and yearning for. ~ Frank Gehry.
Your best work is your expression of yourself. Now, you may not be the greatest at it, but when you do it, you’re the only expert. ~ Frank Gehry.
The message I hope to have sent is just the example of being yourself. I tell this to my students: It’s not about copying me or my logic systems. It’s about allowing yourself to be yourself. ~ Frank Gehry.
Look, architecture has a lot of places to hide behind, a lot of excuses. ‘The client made me do this.’ ‘The city made me do this.’ ‘Oh, the budget.’ I don’t believe that anymore. ~ Frank Gehry.
I don’t know how to overcome this perception that I’m extravagant. ~ Frank Gehry.
When I was a kid, my father didn’t really have much hope for me. He thought I was a dreamer; he didn’t think I would amount to anything. My mother also. ~ Frank Gehry.
The whole can be greater than the sum of it’s parts, that we all have something to put in the pie to make it better, and that the collaborative interaction works. ~ Frank Gehry.
Insightful Frank Gehry Quotes
Time is just a blur for me. I don’t know what – I don’t even know where I am sometimes. ~ Frank Gehry.
Not every person has the same kinds of talents, so you discover what yours are and work with them. ~ Frank Gehry.
My buildings are all on budget. ~ Frank Gehry.
You have to build up a credibility before the support comes to you. ~ Frank Gehry.
Ninety percent of the buildings we live in and around aren’t architecture. No, that’s not right – 98 percent. ~ Frank Gehry.
Well, I’ve always just – I’ve never really gone out looking for work. I always waited for it to sort of hit me on the head. ~ Frank Gehry.
An architect is given a program, budget, place, and schedule. Sometimes the end product rises to art – or at least people call it that. ~ Frank Gehry.
Democracy is a problem and we don’t want to get rid of it. ~ Frank Gehry.
In the end, the character of a civilization is encased in its structures. ~ Frank Gehry.
The game is if the orchestra can hear each other, they play better. If they play better and there’s a tangible feeling between the orchestra and the audience, if they feel each other, the audience responds and the orchestra feels it. ~ Frank Gehry.
Popular Frank Gehry Quotes
I promised a lot of people I’d slow down when I turned 80. ~ Frank Gehry.
I work from the inside out. ~ Frank Gehry.
My father probably – he had flashes of creativity – he used to do store windows for fruit stores that he worked in and stuff. ~ Frank Gehry.
I like the idea of collaboration – it pushes you. It’s a richer experience… ~ Frank Gehry.
Green issues have been used as a marketing tool. Sometimes these green claims are completely meaningless. ~ Frank Gehry.
I don’t want to do architecture that’s dry and dull. ~ Frank Gehry.
We should celebrate variety rather than conformity and allow people to express themselves. That we don’t is more of our denial. ~ Frank Gehry.
Thoughtful Frank Gehry Quotes
I refuse to work unless I get paid, so I don’t get a lot of work sometimes. ~ Frank Gehry.
One of my greatest influences is the Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini. ~ Frank Gehry.
Chicago’s one of the rare places where architecture is more visible. ~ Frank Gehry.
You have freedom, so you have to make choices – and at the point when I make a choice, the building starts to look like a Frank Gehry building. It’s a signature. ~ Frank Gehry.
You can look anywhere and find inspiration. ~ Frank Gehry.
For me, every day is a new thing. I approach each project with a new insecurity, almost like the first project I ever did. And I get the sweats. I go in and start working, I’m not sure where I’m going. If I knew where I was going I wouldn’t do it. ~ Frank Gehry.
Bilbao opened in 1997. It was only ten years later that I was asked to do another museum. A lot of other people got work because of Bilbao. ~ Frank Gehry.
There are a great many things about architecture that are hidden from the untrained eye. ~ Frank Gehry.
Most of our cities built since the war are bland. They’re modernist, they’re cold, and now architects want to go back to that. ~ Frank Gehry.
Thought-Provoking Frank Gehry Quotes
Anybody I talk to agrees that maybe 2 percent of the building environment since the war, we could call architecture. ~ Frank Gehry.
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. ~ Frank Gehry.
In an ideal world, pressure should come from below and from the top. ~ Frank Gehry.
I can’t just decide myself what’s being built. Someone decides what they want, then I work for them. ~ Frank Gehry.
The fact is I’m an opportunist. I’ll take materials around me, materials on my table, and work with them as I’m searching for an idea that works. ~ Frank Gehry.
You see a lot of so-called architecture that part of the ego trip overpowers the functionality and the budget and all that stuff. ~ Frank Gehry.
So these were the 75 top quotes about Frank Gehry.
If you like these quotes and sayings, then you can also read my other posts on Alexis de Tocqueville quotes and Claudette Colvin quotes.
