Raised in Toronto, Canada, Frank Gehry moved with his family to Los Angeles in 1947. Mr. Gehry received his Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Southern California in 1954, and he studied City Planning at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. In subsequent years, Mr. Gehry has built an architectural career that has spanned five decades and produced public and private buildings in America, Europe and Asia. Hallmarks of Mr. Gehry's work include a particular concern that people exist comfortably within the spaces that he creates, and an insistence that his buildings address the context and culture of their sites and the budgets of his clients.
His work has earned Mr. Gehry several of the most significant awards in the architectural field. He was inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects in 1974, and his buildings have received over 100 national and regional A.I.A. awards. In 1977, Mr. Gehry was named recipient of the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1989, he was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize, perhaps the premiere accolade of the field, honoring "significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture." In 1992, he received the Wolf Prize in Art (Architecture) from the Wolf Foundation. In the same year, he was named the recipient of the Praemium Imperiale Award by the Japan Art Association to "honor outstanding contributions to the development, popularization, and progress of the arts." In 1994, he became the first recipient of the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Award for lifetime contribution to the arts. In 1998, Mr. Gehry received the National Medal of Arts, and he became the first recipient of the Friedrich Kiesler Prize. In 1999, Mr. Gehry received the Lotos Medal of Merit from the Lotos Club, and he received the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects. In 2000, Mr. Gehry received the Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects, and he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from Americans for the Arts. In 2002, Mr. Gehry received the Gold Medal for Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Mr. Gehry was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1987, a trustee of the American Academy in Rome in 1989, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1991. In 1994, he was bestowed with the title of Academician by the National Academy of Design. In 1998, he was named an Honorary Academician by the Royal Academy of Arts. In 2003, Mr. Gehry was inducted into the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and he was designated as a Companion to the Order of Canada. In 2005 Mr. Gehry received the Ordre National de Legion d'honneur Chevalier from the French Government. In 2006 he was a first year inductee into the California Hall of Fame. And in 2008 Mr. Gehry received the Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement Award at the Venice Biennale.
Mr. Gehry has received honorary doctoral degrees from Occidental College, Whittier College, the California College of Arts and Crafts, the Technical University of Nova Scotia, the Rhode Island School of Design, the California Institute of Arts, the Southern California Institute of Architecture, the Otis Art Institute at the Parsons School of Design, the University of Toronto, the University of Southern California, Yale University, Harvard University, and the University of Edinburgh. Mr. Gehry has held teaching positions at some of the world's most prestigious institutions including Harvard University, University of Southern California, University of California Los Angeles, Sci-Arc, University of Toronto, Columbia University, the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, and at Yale University where he still teaches today.
Notable projects include: the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; the DZ Bank Building in Berlin; Nationale-Nederlanden Building in Prague; the Jay Pritzker Pavilion and BP Bridge in Millennium Park in Chicago, Illinois; Maggie's Centre, a cancer patient center in Dundee, Scotland; Hotel Marques de Riscal in El Ciego, Spain, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California. The Princeton University Peter B. Lewis Science Library and the Art Gallery of Ontario Renovation recently opened in 2008. Projects under construction include the Lou Ruvo Brain Institute in Las Vegas, Nevada; the New World Symphony in Miami, Florida; and Beekman Residential Tower located in New York City, which will be Mr. Gehry's first high rise building to be completed. Mr. Gehry is also completing design work on the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi and the Foundation Louis Vuitton Museum in Paris, France.
