Frank Gehry once said, 'Take what comes your way. Do the best with it.....and something good will happen'. He was discussing life but somehow he was referencing his materials. It was his grandfather's hardware store which ignited his childhood fascination with bits of wood scraps, chain link fencing and corrugated steel, as he bent, built and twisted them into tiny cities or anything at all. In his eighties now, he still does just that. Playing with materials, exploring their possibilities, and finding their magic set Frank Gehry on the road to being the world's most famous architect. He was looking for a way, he said, 'to break down the monolithic scale of contemporary modern architecture....'. He found it, 'big, lifeless and cold' and set out to 'make it friendly'. He worked out he would achieve his goal if he 'did ten one-room spaces and jammed them together.' The resulting pile-ups of seemingly casual, candy-coloured subversion are extraordinary. And they still use all those barmy bits of material he played around with as a child.
1 Vitra HQ Basel, 1994. Photo by smow blog from Flickr
2 Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, 1997. Photo by dalbera from Flickr
3 Beach House, Venice beach, California, 1986. Photo by Nancy 'Annie' JonesFrancis from Flickr. All under CC BY license.
