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Washington D.C. has earned a reputation for iconic architecture. Emerging from the L'Enfant and McMillan Plans, Washington’s cityscape includes wide streets and low-rise buildings that sprawl out from circles and rectangular plazas. From the White House to Lincoln Memorial, Washington’s architecture was built to symbolize the nation’s values. Today, new projects are designed to rethink the city’s morphology while respecting its identity.
Over two decades in the making, Frank Gehry's design for the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, D.C. will finally open to the public this Friday. A tribute to the 34th President of the United States, the memorial was commissioned by Congress in 1999 to honor the legacy of the World War II Supreme Allied Commander. Eisenhower is well known for leading the invasion of Normandy, a turning point in the war, and for serving two terms as President of United States.
Created between 2016 and 2020, WEEK and Axel de Stampa have put together a series of architecture gifs, Architecture Animée or Animated Architecture, revealing a playful and fictional side of famous buildings such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum by Frank Lloyd Wright, the Fondation Louis Vuitton by Gehry Partners, and 1111 Lincoln Road by Herzog & de Meuron.
As 2019 winds down, we're taking a look ahead to the projects we're most looking forward to in 2020. With a mix of cultural and commercial programs, the designs are located across five continents, with many under construction for multiple years. Designed across a wide range of scales, they represent a mix of interconnected landscapes, museums, and the world's newest skyscrapers.
Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is finally set to begin construction on Saadiyat Island in the Persian Gulf. First announced in 2007, the Guggenheim project is over a decade in the making for the United Arab Emirates. Situated next to the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the sculptural project will showcase art from around the world within a mountain of plaster blocks and self-cooling translucent cones.
Gehry Partners has unveiled renderings for a new 800,000-square-foot Warner Bros. Headquarters in Burbank, California. The project will include two new buildings designed to be "like icebergs floating along the freeway." Gehry Partners is working with Worthe Real Estate Group and Stockbridge Real Estate Fund to finish the new office buildings in time for Warner Bros.’ centennial celebrations in 2023.
Architecture, unlike other aspects of culture (such as fashion or music), can only really be experienced and understood in person. For highly branded companies, designing a new building can be a prime opportunity to signal taste and values - but also creates an interesting architectural conundrum. While the buildings will be inhabited (nearly 24/7) by company employees, they’re also very much populated by the imaginations of people across the globe. What is it like to be in these places?
Frank Gehry's Grand Avenue towers have officially broken ground in downtown Los Angeles. After over a decade in the making, the project was designed from a central retail core into the two terracing towers with a mix of retail, entertainment and residences. The $1 billion complex aims to turn Grand Avenue into a full entertainment district. Conceived as a public-private partnership, the project is considered a capstone for the Grand Avenue Redevelopment initiative to complete the city’s main downtown cultural corridor.
Louisiana Channel has released a new video interview with Frank Gehry. Known for his expressive use of form, Gehry has become one of the most important architects of our time. Recorded at his studio in Santa Monica, the interview explores Gehry's life and early influences, as well as modern architecture and the world as he sees it today. Marc-Christoph Wagner explores Gehry's ideas on building, art, and leaving your mark on the world.
Frank Gehry's Grand Avenue towers are finally set to begin construction, over a decade after the project was initially proposed. Conceived as a public-private partnership, the towers are sited across from Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. The project was designed from a central retail core into the two terracing towers with a mix of retail, entertainment and residences. The $1 billion complex aims to turn Grand Avenue into a full entertainment district.
This article was originally published on April 27, 2017. To read the stories behind other celebrated architecture projects, visit our AD Classics section.
Even at the Vitra Campus in Weil-am-Rhein—a collection of furniture factories, offices, showrooms, and galleries, many of which are the products of iconic architects—the Vitra Design Museum stands out as exceptional. With its sculptural form composed of interconnected curving volumes, the museum is the unmistakable work of Frank Gehry – an architect who has built a legacy for himself upon such structures. What may not be immediately apparent is the crossroads that this serene white building represents: it was in this project at the southwestern corner of Germany (close to the Swiss border) that Gehry first realized a structure in the vein of his now signature style.
Gehry Partners recently completed Facebook's new MPK 21 building in Menlo Park, California. Expanding the company's existing footprint, the design was built in less than 18 months as a highly sustainable building. Formed to bring the outdoors into the office space, the project centers on a sheltered green space with 40-foot-tall redwood trees and an amphitheater-style courtyard that connects to the original Gehry-designed MPK 20 building.
Internationally acclaimed architect Frank Gehry (born 28 February 1929) has been headlining architectural news platforms since he established his Los Angeles practice in 1962 and remodeled his home in Santa Monica. Notorious for his expressive use of form (and its-sometimes inflationary effect on project budgets), Gehry is best known for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, which fellow architect Philip Johnson once dubbed “the greatest building of our time.”
Frank Gehry’s designs for the Extreme Model Railroad and Contemporary Architecture Museum have been revealed, and as its name implies, the museum is about to take miniature trains to the maximum.
Located on an 83,000 square foot site in North Adams, Massachusetts, just a few blocks away from contemporary art museum and artist residence Mass MoCA, the Extreme Model Railroad and Contemporary Architecture Museum looks set to become the preeminent playground for architects and model train enthusiasts alike.
New York City’s most buzzy megaproject, Hudson Yards, may have just added two more huge names to their list of notable architects, if a new report from the Wall Street Journal is to be trusted.
According to a source the WSJ describes as “a person familiar with the matter,” Santiago Calatrava and Frank Gehry will both design new residential towers for the second phase of the 28-acre complex, located at the north end of the High Line in west Manhattan.
Facebook is closing in on a deal to create a new London headquarters, and will be bringing along the design talents of Frank Gehry, according to reports from The Times and Architects’ Journal.
Described as a “growth space” that will allow the company to expand their European presence, the new headquarters would span four buildings in King’s Cross Central – the same part of the city where Google is building its own 11-story “groundscraper” campus designed by BIG and Heatherwick Studios.
New renderings have been revealed of Gehry Partners’ Grand Avenue Project as construction is finally set to begin this fall. Located across from Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles, the development now known as The Grand will offer up retail, entertainment and residences within two blocky, terracing towers.
You’ve probably seen the ads. Popping out from your Facebook newsfeed, the Masterclass sales pitch immediately attracts the eye: beautifully backlit wooden models and silky hand sketching emphasized by orchestral swells are accompanied by an adorable pirouette by the one and only Frank Gehry. The combination of Gehry’s status and slick production has managed to amass over 1.6 million views for the trailer on Youtube. Even in the company of courses taught by Martin Scorsese, Deadmau5, and Samuel L Jackson, the lone architect impressively lays claim to the eighth most popular teaser in the Masterclass series. The production value alone is almost a convincing argument for the $90 USD price, a detail that is quietly left out of the trailer.
The course has been reviewed by a critic, a practicing architect, and a curator—but what of its ostensible target audience, the architecture student? Has Masterclass managed to crack the online class conundrum with cinematography and celebrity?
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