Home / Authors / Frank Gehry

Frank Gehry

Frank Gehry Quotes

Architect

Frank Gehry, born on February 28, 1929, is a renowned architect from Canada. Known for his unique architectural style characterized by irregular, flowing lines and curves, Gehry is hailed as an innovator in the modern architectural world. His works are scattered across the globe, including the United States, Europe, and Asia, with some of his most famous projects being the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

Filter quotes by topic

All People Architecture Ifs Building Thinking Architect World Artist Art Knows

Famous Frank Gehry Quotes

“I don't micromanage the interiors. People ask me to and I say no. I don't want to control everything.”

People Want Asks Ask Me Interiors

Author:Frank Gehry

“I'm going to design the container and interior spaces. You bring your own stuff to it and make it your own.”

Stuff Space Design Interiors Containers Interior Space

Author:Frank Gehry

“Art is about people. I think the discussion about whether architecture is art or not is lamebrain.”

People Thinking Art Art Is Architecture Discussion

Author:Frank Gehry

“Artists dismiss me as an architect, so I'm not in their box, and architects dismiss me as an artist, so I'm not in their box.”

Artist Boxes Architect

Author:Frank Gehry

“I don't know whose box I'm in, and I don't really care.”

Knows Care Boxes

Author:Frank Gehry

“In the Renaissance there wasn't a distinction. Bernini was an artist and he made architecture, and Michelangelo also did some great architecture.”

Made Artist Architecture Distinction Renaissance Bernini

Author:Frank Gehry

“The back of Saint Peter's is one of the finest pieces of architecture I've ever seen.”

Pieces Saint Architecture Peter Finest Saint Peter

Author:Frank Gehry

“The architect Borromini's Quattro Fontane, a little church in Rome, is one of the most beautiful rooms in history.”

Littles Beautiful Church Rooms Rome Architect

Author:Frank Gehry

“You've got to like the people you work with.”

Author:Frank Gehry

“I'm preprogrammed emotionally and intellectually not to go down blind alleys. I don't waste the time. I automatically edit out whatever's impractical.”

Waste Blind Edits Alleys

Author:Frank Gehry

“The rap on me on the street is the opposite - I'm impractical, I'm more expensive, it's too complicated and I run over budgets, which isn't true. None of that's true and there's plenty of documentation if anybody needs it.”

Ifs Needs Running Streets Opposites Complicated Rap Plenty Budgets Expensive Documentation

Author:Frank Gehry

“If the room is friendly to a relationship between lecturer and audience, you feel everything - the tension, the appreciation. I think the audience feels it too.”

Ifs Thinking Feels Rooms Audience Appreciation Tension Friendly Lecturer

Author:Frank Gehry

“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.”

Ifs Feelings Kids Games Building Garden Code Hockey Leafs Stadiums Forums Montreal Great Feelings Maple

Author:Frank Gehry

“The safety requirements, which are necessary, spread everything out and push people farther and farther away from the stage and from each other.”

People Stage Safety Spread Requirements

Author:Frank Gehry

“One of my unsung heroes is Erich Mendelsohn. I met him when I was a student and he was a cranky old man and very unpleasant. But if you go to his Einstein Tower in Potsdam, Germany you see an enormous intellect at work with a language that was personal and new. It has a sense of urban design and of theater and procession I hadn't seen before.”

Ifs Men Language Design Students Hero Mets Theater Intellect Enormous Germany Old Man Towers Urban Procession Cranky Urban Design Unsung Hero Potsdam

Author:Frank Gehry

“Erich Mendelsohn's drawings are expressive and beautiful. If he'd had the computers we have now, everything I've done he would have done before me. I would have had to figure out something else.”

Ifs Done Beautiful Figures Computer Drawing Expressive

Author:Frank Gehry

“Everything - design and technology and materials - has changed since the World Trade Center was built. A lot of it has to do with computers, which allow us to be far more efficient as well as structurally sound.”

World Wells Sound Technology Design Changed Materials Computer Built Trade Efficient World Trade World Trade Center

Author:Frank Gehry

“Computers allow architects to remain parental instead of being marginalized by the contractors and managers.”

Computer Managers Architect Parental Marginalized Contractor

Author:Frank Gehry

“With computers we can work everything out from the beginning.”

Author:Frank Gehry

“If you're serious about being an architect, you've got to learn how to take responsibility.”

Ifs Responsibility Serious Architect Taking Responsibility

Author:Frank Gehry

“You have to do every detail on every bloody piece of the building. You have to know how the engineering works. You have to know how the fittings go together. You have to master the mechanical, electrical, acoustical - everything.”

Knows Together Know How Pieces Building Masters Details Engineering Bloody Electrical

Author:Frank Gehry

“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."”

Writing Looks Different Asks Class Pieces Students Paper Tables Signatures

Author:Frank Gehry

“That's what you have to find in architecture. You have to find your signature. When you find it, you're the only expert on it. People can say they like it or don't like it. They can argue about it, but it's yours.”

People Architecture Arguing Experts Signatures

Author:Frank Gehry

“That's where you have to look for your inspiration. Don't separate the rest of your life - who you are, what you love - from your work.”

Looks Inspiration Who You Are Rest Of Your Life What You Love

Author:Frank Gehry

“It should begin much earlier with arts education in the American school system, which is sadly deficient.”

Should Art School School System Art Education

Author:Frank Gehry

“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.”

“Generally in our world, whether in architecture or almost anywhere else, we devalue the artist, and schools at whatever level shut people down.”

People World School Artist Levels Architecture Our World Devalue

Author:Frank Gehry

“I attended a lecture by a gray-haired old man from Finland, who later I discovered was the architect Alvar Aalto. I was very moved. I wasn't interested in architecture, but it was a moving thing I've never forgotten.”

Men Moving Moved Forgotten Architecture Old Man Gray Architect Lectures Finland

Author:Frank Gehry

“When people condemn me for designing iconic buildings in cities and not having an idea what a city is, they haven't done their homework. I started in urban design and city planning. It's just that when I got out of school there wasn't much of a market for that. There still isn't.”

People Stills Ideas Done School Cities Havens Design Building Planning Urban Homework Iconic City Planning Urban Design

Author:Frank Gehry

“I'm a do-gooder liberal.”

Author:Frank Gehry

“That's why you go into architecture - at least I did - to do things for people. I think most of us are idealists. You start out that way, anyway.”

People Thinking Way Architecture Idealist

Author:Frank Gehry

“I didn't have any interest in doing rich people's homes. I still don't.”

People Stills Home Interest Rich Rich People

Author:Frank Gehry

“Here we are surrounded by material that's being manufactured in unimaginable quantities worldwide and is used everywhere. I don't like it, no one likes it, and yet it's pervasive. We don't even see it.”

Used Materials Likes Quantity Unimaginable

Author:Frank Gehry

“Cardboard is another material that's ubiquitous and everybody hates, yet when I made furniture with it everybody loved it.”

Made Hate Materials Furniture

Author:Frank Gehry

“In the art world Robert Rauschenberg had been combining common materials that people thought was art and beautiful, and it was. If he could do that, I could emulate him.”

People Ifs World Art Beautiful Common Materials Emulate Art World Combining

Author:Frank Gehry

“China is building cities for a 20 to 40 percent increase in population. India is quickly growing. The carbon footprints of that and other development around the world are overwhelming.”

World Cities Growing Building Development Percent India Increase Population China Around The World Overwhelming Carbon Footprint Carbon Footprint

Author:Frank Gehry

“Many people put a green button on their collar and feel good, just like a lot of people put an American flag on their lapels and feel patriotic. It's not enough.”

People Feels Enough Green Feel Good Patriotic Flags Buttons Collars American Flag

Author:Frank Gehry

“It's not new that architecture can profoundly affect a place, sometimes transform it.”

Sometimes Architecture

Author:Frank Gehry

“Architecture and any art can transform a person, even save someone. It can for children - for anyone. It still does for me.”

Children Persons Doe Art Stills Architecture

Author:Frank Gehry

“I am just relating to the world we live in. I see some order in it, even though it looks like mush.”

World Looks Order

Author:Frank Gehry

“There is an order to our environment, a broader order.”

Order Environment Our Environment

Author:Frank Gehry

“Picasso could use everyone's paintings and transform them into his own. He was using ideas from all of his contemporaries.”

Ideas Use Painting

Author:Frank Gehry

“Ideas exist in the marketplace; they are thrown out for everyone to use.”

Ideas Use Thrown Marketplace

Author:Frank Gehry

“Just because you are an architect and make decent buildings does not mean that you can suddenly become a set designer for one of the best avant-garde dancers in the world.”

World Mean Doe Building Designer Decent Dancer Architect Avant Garde

Author:Frank Gehry

“When you agree to collaborate, you agree to jump off a cliff holding hands with everyone, hoping the resourcefulness of each will insure that you all land on your feet.”

Hands Feet Land Agree Cliffs Holding Hands Resourcefulness

Author:Frank Gehry

“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.”

Thinking Knows Father Talking

Author:Frank Gehry

“I'm inspired by a lot of stuff. I always was interested in sculpture and painting and music and literature and all those things. There's no one thing.”

Literature Stuff One Thing Painting Inspired Sculpture

Author:Frank Gehry

“I used to read more when I was a kid than I do now. It was all sort of fuel for the fire to teach you how to think and how to make things and it informed the architecture that I was doing. It's better coming in with that history and that kind of knowledge and depth of understanding of humanity that is very important for building buildings - for understanding people and how they should live and how you could make your lives better and stuff like that.”

People Thinking Should Kind Important Kids Used Humanity Stuff Understanding Teach Fire Building Depth Architecture Fuel

Author:Frank Gehry

“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.”

Art Community Building Equal Library I Have Learned Iconic

Author:Frank Gehry

“I think the biggest problem with 'industrial' architecture is that it's lost its sense of humanity. Minimalist stuff drains all the humanity out of it. That idea works great for the money thing, but it doesn't work great for the feeling thing.”

Thinking Feelings Problem Humanity Architecture

Author:Frank Gehry

About the Author

Born: February 28, 1929
Known for: Architect
Quotes: 170

Related Topics

People Architecture Ifs Building Thinking Architect World Artist Art Knows

Popular Topics

People Ifs Thinking Knows Men World Way Want Love Life Inspirational Needs Giving Feels Should Writing Trying Years Mind Firsts

Books & Sources

Frank O. Gehry: Selected Works : 1969 to TodayRelated source material

Dancing buildingRelated source material

Similar Authors

Curtis W. FentressBrowse related quotes
Zaha HadidBrowse related quotes
Tadao AndoBrowse related quotes
David ChipperfieldBrowse related quotes
Frank Lloyd WrightBrowse related quotes
Alexander Jackson DavisBrowse related quotes
Renzo PianoBrowse related quotes
Lebbeus WoodsBrowse related quotes
Ludwig Mies van der RoheBrowse related quotes
Jean NouvelBrowse related quotes