Gehry << GAYR ee >> , Frank (1929-…), is one of the most original and provocative American architects working today. He is known for pushing the limits of architectural design. Many of his buildings resemble free-form sculptures constructed with inexpensive materials, such as corrugated metal and chain-link fencing.
Gehry was born Ephraim Owen Goldberg on Feb. 28, 1929, in Toronto, Ontario. In 1947, he moved with his family to Los Angeles. He began practicing architecture with Austrian architect Victor Gruen while studying at the University of Southern California. After Gehry earned his degree in architecture in 1954, he continued to work for Gruen. He began his own practice in Los Angeles in 1962.
Gehry’s reconstruction of his home in Santa Monica, California, in the late 1970’s drew much public attention. His important commissions include the Air and Space Gallery (1984) at the California Science Center in Los Angeles; the University of Toledo Center for the Visual Arts (1992) in Ohio; the Guggenheim Museum (1997) in Bilbao, Spain; the Experience Music Project rock music museum (2000; now called the Museum of Pop Culture) in Seattle; the Walt Disney Concert Hall (2003) in Los Angeles; the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts (2003) at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; the Ray and Maria Stata Center for Computer, Information and Intelligence Sciences (2004) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Jay Pritzker Pavilion band shell (2004) in Chicago; the MARTa art museum (2005) in Herford, Germany; the IAC Headquarters Building (2007) in New York City; a new building for the Art Gallery of Ontario (2008) in Toronto; the New World Center (2011), a new home for the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, Florida; and the Louis Vuitton Foundation art museum (2014) in Paris. 
Gehry designed a branch of the Guggenheim art museum to be built on an island in the United Arab Emirates as part of a multibillion-dollar project called the Cultural District of Saadiyat Island. Gehry also designed 8 Spruce Street (2011), a 76-story residential tower in New York City, his first skyscraper. He designed the expansion of the Facebook, Inc. (now called Meta Platforms, Inc.), office campus (2015) in Menlo Park, California. Gehry also designed the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial (2020) in Washington, D.C. The memorial includes sculptures; a bas-relief featuring scenes from Eisenhower’s life; and a woven-metal tapestry of the cliffs of Normandy, the site of the Allied D-Day landing of June 6, 1944.
In 1989, Gehry was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize, often considered the Nobel Prize of architecture. Gehry has also designed furniture.
