Frank Gehry: influences, peers and legacy

Every connection with its receipt

Frank Gehry's architecture came less from architectural dogma than from painters, sculptors, and the ad-hoc materials of Los Angeles. This mix traces the modernist masters he absorbed at USC and in Europe, the artists who taught him to think in fragments and folds, and the digitally fluent generation that followed him through CATIA-driven curves.

The Kynda mix for Frank Gehry

• Key Influence · Notre-Dame du Haut, Ronchamp by Le Corbusier (1955). Gehry travelled through Europe in 1961 and Ronchamp was among the buildings that reoriented him: a sculptural, hand-shaped concrete chapel by the era's arch-rationalist, proving modernism could be plastic and irrational. Its swelling roof and light-slot walls anticipate the curved, sculpted masses Gehry pursued from the Vitra Design Museum to Bilbao, and he repeatedly named Corbusier among the figures he measured himself against.
• Influencia Obscura · Merzbau by Kurt Schwitters (1937). Schwitters spent years turning his Hanover apartment into an accreting environment of plaster grottoes and found junk — the purest ancestor of Gehry's 1978 Santa Monica house, where an old bungalow was engulfed in chain-link, raw studs and tilted glass. Destroyed in 1943 and known mainly through photographs, the Merzbau is the underground precedent for architecture as collage of cheap, discarded material.
• Local Roots · Schindler House by Rudolph Schindler (1922). Schindler's West Hollywood house — tilt-slab concrete, redwood, canvas, sleeping baskets on the roof — established the Los Angeles habit of experimental domestic architecture built cheaply and personally. It is the direct forebear of Gehry's own Santa Monica residence and of the whole LA scene, from Case Study experiments to the 1970s Venice studio culture in which Gehry worked among artists.
• Beyond the Medium · Torqued Ellipses by Richard Serra (1996). Serra's leaning, rolled-steel enclosures were fabricated using shipbuilding techniques and software — exactly the industrial route Gehry's office took with CATIA for Bilbao's titanium skin. The two were friends and shared an early-1980s conceptual bridge project, and Serra's Snake was installed in Bilbao's long gallery, making the sculptor's torqued steel and Gehry's curved museum a single argument about mass and movement.
• Peer · Vitra Fire Station by Zaha Hadid (1993). Hadid's splintered concrete fire station sits on the same Weil am Rhein campus where Gehry built the Vitra Design Museum in 1989, both commissioned by Rolf Fehlbaum as part of an architectural collection. The two were the era's leading exponents of non-orthogonal form and shared the Pritzker lineage; Hadid's shard geometries and Gehry's curves defined the 1990s escape from the right angle.
• From the Canon · Guggenheim Museum Bilbao by Frank Gehry (1997). Gehry's titanium-clad museum on the Nervión turned a declining industrial port into a pilgrimage site and gave the world the phrase 'Bilbao effect'. Built using CATIA software adapted from aerospace to rationalise its curved surfaces, it fused the sculptural instincts of his artist friendships with genuine construction technology, and remains the defining building of the late twentieth century's formal liberation.
• Key Collaborator · Spoonbridge and Cherry by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen (1988). Oldenburg and van Bruggen were Gehry's closest artist collaborators: their giant binoculars form the entrance of his 1991 Chiat/Day building in Venice, California, and the three worked together on projects including the Camp Good Times scheme. Spoonbridge and Cherry, in Minneapolis, shows the pair's method of blowing everyday objects into architecture-scale monuments — precisely the logic Gehry borrowed.
• Legacy · Absolute Towers by MAD Architects (2012). Ma Yansong worked in Gehry's office before founding MAD in Beijing, and the twisting Mississauga towers nicknamed the 'Marilyn Monroe' buildings carry his former employer's conviction that curvature can be built at scale. Ma's writing on an emotional, sculptural architecture against the rectilinear grid extends the argument Gehry began with plywood and titanium into a Chinese practice.

What influenced Frank Gehry

• Fritz Lang. Gehry cites filmmaker Fritz Lang's fantasy city imagery as an influence on the Guggenheim Bilbao design. (also via Metropolis) “so I carried on with this Fritz Long image and made a--sort of an idealistic city in the atrium that's vertical” (The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer (public broadcasting))
• Frank Lloyd Wright (1867). Gehry acknowledges Frank Lloyd Wright as a reference point he was consciously reacting to. (also via Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Guggenheim Museum New York) “How much was Frank Lloyd Wright in your mind? FRANK GEHRY: I knew he would hate what I did.” (The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer (public broadcasting))
• Philip Johnson (1818). Architect Philip Johnson praised Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao as the greatest building of the time. (via Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Philip Johnson House (New Canaan)) “legendary architect Philip Johnson as "the greatest building of our time"” (Wikipedia)
• Twentysix Gasoline Stations by Ed Ruscha (1963). Twentysix Gasoline Stations (Ed Ruscha) — culture for Frank Gehry “Interviews with Ruscha are included in the documentaries Dennis Hopper: The Decisive Moments (2002), Sketches of Frank Gehry (2005), The Cool School (2008), Iconoclasts (2008), and How to Make a Book with Steidl (2010), among others.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Viktor Shklovsky. Gehry's design approach is likened to Shklovsky's literary theory concept. “embracing ideas of flow and defamiliarization, akin to Viktor Shklovsky 's concept of "laying bare the device"” (Wikipedia)
• William Pereira. Gehry studied under architect William Pereira at USC. “Gehry went on to graduate from the University of Southern California 's School of Architecture in 1954, where his professors included William Pereira” (Wikipedia)
• Pablo Picasso. The Pritzker jury compared Gehry's resistance to categorization to Picasso's. “he has as well a sureness and maturity that resists, in the same way that Picasso did, being bound either by critical acceptance or his successes” (Wikipedia)
• California funk art. Gehry's style is linked to the California funk art movement. “his work was consistent with the California " funk " art movement of the 1960s and early 1970s, which featured the use of inexpensive found objects and nontraditional media such as clay to make serious art” (Wikipedia)
• Pierre Boulez. Gehry designed a stage set exploring the life and career of composer Pierre Boulez. “Gehry designed a set for an "exploration of the life and career of Pierre Boulez " by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra” (Wikipedia)
• The Simpsons by Matt Groening (1989). Gehry appeared as himself in an episode of The Simpsons designing a fictional concert hall. “He also voiced himself in a 2005 episode of The Simpsons , " The Seven-Beer Snitch ", where he designs a concert hall for the fictional city of Springfield” (Wikipedia)
• Alexander Calder. Gehry designed an exhibition presenting the work of sculptor Alexander Calder. “Gehry was asked to design an exhibition on the work of Alexander Calder at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Resnick Pavilion” (Wikipedia)
• Shiva Nataraja (dancing Shiva bronze figures). Gehry names traditional Indian Shiva bronze sculptures as an influence on his sense of movement in architecture. “the Shiva dancing figures from India, the - a multiarmed dancer in bronze” (Fresh Air (WHYY/NPR))
• Hiroshige's woodcuts of carp by Hiroshige. Gehry cites Hiroshige's carp woodcuts as an inspiration for his fish-form architectural language. “I loved the drawings of Hiroshige and Japanese woodcuts of carp.” (Fresh Air (WHYY/NPR))
• Philip Johnson House (New Canaan) by Philip Johnson. Gehry cites Philip Johnson's New Canaan house as a model for his own new home design with separate pavilions. “More like the Philip Johnson house in New Canaan, where there's a living room, and then there's a separate room - a building for bedrooms and stuff.” (Fresh Air (WHYY/NPR))
• Metropolis by Fritz Lang (1927). Metropolis (Fritz Lang) — culture for Frank Gehry (curator-witnessed, NewsHour 1997) “it kind of fits visions of fantasy cities by Fritz Long and-- ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: The film maker. FRANK GEHRY: Yes. And where you saw these ramps and moving cars up in the air coming into buildings and stuff, and so I built on that idea.” (The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer (public broadcasting))
• Guggenheim Museum New York by Frank Lloyd Wright. Journalist notes the visual evocation of Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim New York rotunda in Gehry's Bilbao design. (via Guggenheim Museum Bilbao) “By some accounts the building's light-filled central atrium evokes the Guggenheim, New York's world famous rotunda, both inside and out.” (The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer (public broadcasting))
• Villa Mairea by Alvar Aalto (1939). Villa Mairea (Alvar Aalto) — titan for Frank Gehry (wikidata.org)
• Merzbau by Kurt Schwitters (1937). Merzbau (Kurt Schwitters) — ghost for Frank Gehry (wikidata.org)
• Watts Towers by Simon Rodia (1954). Watts Towers (Simon Rodia) — ghost for Frank Gehry (wikidata.org)
• Notre-Dame du Haut, Ronchamp by Le Corbusier (1955). Notre-Dame du Haut, Ronchamp (Le Corbusier) — titan for Frank Gehry
• Torqued Ellipses by Richard Serra (1996). Torqued Ellipses (Richard Serra) — culture for Frank Gehry
• Elsa Peretti (1940). Tiffany & Co. Frank Gehry Collection (Frank Gehry) — legacy for Elsa Peretti (via Tiffany & Co. Frank Gehry Collection)

Peers and kindred spirits

• Claes Oldenburg. Gehry collaborated with artist Claes Oldenburg on the Chiat/Day Building. (also via Spoonbridge and Cherry, Il Corso del Coltello) “the Chiat/Day Building (1991) in Venice, in collaboration with Claes Oldenburg , which is well known for its massive sculpture of binoculars” (Wikipedia)
• IAC Building. Establishes Frank Gehry as the architect who designed the IAC Building. (also via Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Walt Disney Concert Hall) “was designed by Frank Gehry and commissioned by media mogul Barry Diller” (New York Voices (public broadcasting))
• Zaha Hadid (1950). Comparison drawn between Hadid's Cincinnati museum and Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao, contemporaries in the field. (also via Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Vitra Fire Station) “her design did not have the flamboyance of the Guggenheim Bilbao of Frank Gehry , built at the same time” (Wikipedia)
• Richard Serra. Gehry names sculptor Richard Serra as a personal friend and point of artistic comparison. (also via Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Torqued Ellipses) “I could not be making sculpture like my friend Richard Serra. He spends all of his life messing around with two-inch thick steel of a certain dimension and it's a highly refined language that he's developed.” (The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer (public broadcasting))
• Vitra Fire Station by Zaha Hadid. Vitra Fire Station (Zaha Hadid) — peer for Frank Gehry “In 1989, Fehlbaum had invited Frank Gehry, then little-known, to build a design museum at the Vitra factory in Weil-am-Rhein.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Spoonbridge and Cherry by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen (1988). Spoonbridge and Cherry (Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen) — collaborator for Frank Gehry “In addition to freestanding projects, they occasionally contributed to architectural projects, among them, two Los Angeles projects in collaboration with architect Frank Gehry: Toppling Ladder With Spilling Paint, which was installed at …” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Il Corso del Coltello by Claes Oldenburg. Gehry co-created an installation/performance piece with Claes Oldenburg at the Venice Biennale. “he also contributed to the 1985 Venice Biennale with an installation and performance named Il Corso del Coltello, in collaboration with Claes Oldenburg” (Wikipedia)
• Available Light by Lucinda Childs (1983). Gehry designed the stage set for Lucinda Childs's dance piece. “Gehry created the stage design for Lucinda Childs ' dance Available Light , set to music by John Adams” (Wikipedia)
• University of Southern California. Gehry held a professorship at his alma mater USC. “In January 2011, Gehry joined the University of Southern California (USC) faculty, as the Judge Widney Professor of Architecture” (Wikipedia)
• Harvard University. Gehry taught at Harvard University. “He also held teaching positions at Harvard University , the University of California at Los Angeles , the University of Toronto , Columbia University , the Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich , and at Yale University” (Wikipedia)
• University of California, Los Angeles. Gehry taught at UCLA. “He also held teaching positions at Harvard University , the University of California at Los Angeles , the University of Toronto , Columbia University , the Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich , and at Yale University” (Wikipedia)
• University of Toronto. Gehry taught at the University of Toronto. “He also held teaching positions at Harvard University , the University of California at Los Angeles , the University of Toronto , Columbia University , the Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich , and at Yale University” (Wikipedia)
• Columbia University. Gehry taught at Columbia University. “He also held teaching positions at Harvard University , the University of California at Los Angeles , the University of Toronto , Columbia University , the Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich , and at Yale University” (Wikipedia)
• Yale University. Gehry taught at Yale University. “He also held teaching positions at Harvard University , the University of California at Los Angeles , the University of Toronto , Columbia University , the Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich , and at Yale University” (Wikipedia)
• Turnaround Arts: California. Gehry co-founded a nonprofit arts education organization. “In 2014, Gehry co-founded Turnaround Arts: California, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that expands access to the arts in under-resourced public elementary and middle schools across California” (Wikipedia)
• Easy Edges. Gehry founded the furniture company Easy Edges. “Gehry ultimately dropped out of his graduate program at Harvard University (where he studied urban planning) to start the furniture manufacturing company Easy Edges, which specialised in creating pieces with cardboard” (Wikipedia)
• Don Giovanni by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Gehry designed the stage set for a production of Mozart's Don Giovanni. “Gehry designed the set for the Los Angeles Philharmonic 's opera production of Mozart's Don Giovanni , performed at the Walt Disney Concert Hall” (Wikipedia)
• Osud by Leoš Janáček. Gehry designed the stage scene for the American premiere of Janáček's opera Osud. “Gehry designed the scene for the American premiere of Janáček's Osud at the Gehry-designed Fisher Center at Bard College” (Wikipedia)
• Dassault Systèmes. Gehry Technologies partnered with Dassault Systèmes to develop architectural software. “In 2005, Gehry Technologies began a partnership with Dassault Systèmes to bring innovations from the aerospace and manufacturing world to AEC and developed Digital Project software” (Wikipedia)
• Foster + Partners. Gehry collaborated with Foster + Partners on the Battersea Power Station development. “Gehry was appointed joint architect with Foster + Partners to design the High Street phase of the development of Battersea Power Station in London” (Wikipedia)
• Alpha Epsilon Pi. Gehry was a member of the fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi during his time at USC. “During that time, he became a member of Alpha Epsilon Pi” (Wikipedia)
• Tiffany & Co.. Gehry collaborated with Tiffany & Co. to design multiple jewelry collections. “Gehry collaborated with luxury jewelry company Tiffany & Co., creating six distinct jewelry collections: the Orchid, Fish, Torque, Equus, Axis, and Fold collections” (Wikipedia)
• Louis Vuitton. Gehry collaborated with Louis Vuitton on a monogram design campaign. “Gehry was one of the six "iconoclasts" selected by French fashion house Louis Vuitton to design a piece using their iconic monogram pattern as part of their "Celebrating Monogram" campaign” (Wikipedia)
• Emeco. Gehry collaborated with furniture manufacturer Emeco on chair designs. “He collaborated with American furniture manufacturer Emeco on designs such as the 2004 "Superlight" chair” (Wikipedia)
• Stephanie Barron. Gehry collaborated repeatedly with LACMA curator Stephanie Barron on exhibition design. “Gehry was asked to design an exhibition on the work of Alexander Calder at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Resnick Pavilion, again invited by the museum's curator Stephanie Barron” (Wikipedia)
• Rem Koolhaas (1944). Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (Frank Gehry) — peer for Rem Koolhaas (via Guggenheim Museum Bilbao) “Each architect had to design a stage-like "frontage" to a Potemkin-type internal street; the façades by Costantino Dardi, Frank Gehry and OMA were the only ones that did not employ Post-Modern architecture motifs or historical references.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• The Broad. Places The Broad in the same arts district as Disney Concert Hall. (via Walt Disney Concert Hall) “STRETCHING ALONG GRAND AVENUE IN DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES, AND INCLUDING DISNEY CONCERT HALL AND THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART” (PBS NewsHour (public broadcasting))
• Schindler House by Rudolph Schindler (1922). Schindler House (Rudolph Schindler) — geography for Frank Gehry (wikidata.org)
• Eames House (Case Study House No. 8) by Charles and Ray Eames (1949). Eames House (Case Study House No. 8) (Charles and Ray Eames) — geography for Frank Gehry
• Diamond Ranch High School by Thom Mayne / Morphosis (1999). Diamond Ranch High School (Thom Mayne / Morphosis) — peer for Frank Gehry
• Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg by Herzog & de Meuron with Yasuhisa Toyota (2017). Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg (Herzog & de Meuron with Yasuhisa Toyota) — collaborator for Frank Gehry

Who Frank Gehry influenced

• Sketches of Frank Gehry. Sydney Pollack's documentary is centered on Gehry and his work. “filmmaker Sydney Pollack made a documentary about Gehry's work, Sketches of Frank Gehry , which followed Gehry over five years and painted a positive portrait of his character” (Wikipedia)
• Michelle Kaufman (1965). Caller states that architect Michelle Kaufman studied with Frank Gehry. “It's a manufactured home she studied with Frank Geary.” (Focus 580 (public broadcasting))
• Absolute Towers by MAD Architects (2012). Absolute Towers (MAD Architects) — legacy for Frank Gehry
• 8 House by Bjarke Ingels Group (2010). 8 House (Bjarke Ingels Group) — legacy for Frank Gehry