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Frank
Gehry: The Houses by Mildred Friedman
W. W. Norton, 2009
Hardcover, 272 pages
The same year that the Guggenheim
opened in Bilbao I splurged on Frank
O. Gehry: The Complete Works by Francesco Dal Co
and Kurt W. Forster. After the book received an update six
years later I couldn't help think that publishers put out
so-called monographs to make money many times over on basically
the same product. Cynicism aside, the subsequent publication
points out how monographs that call themselves complete
works aren't really "complete" until the architect
has stopped designing buildings, usually the result of death.
This collection of houses by the Pritzker
Prize-winning architect does not purport to be complete
-- presented is actually a selection of Gehry's residential
commissions -- but it is that more than Dal Co and Forster's
mammoth book. Since the architect's projects are now much
larger in scope and size than single-family houses, it's
safe to say that we won't see any more Gehry-designed houses*.
So this book acts as a fairly decent summation of one aspect
of Gehry's oeuvre, spanning the various phases of his career,
from his inexpensive origins to his CATIA-enabled
large-scale sculptures.
But the book is much more than a
look back at Gehry's evolution over the years. It contains
portraits of the different clients Gehry worked with (most
clients were interviewed for the book); it reveals the Gehry's
working process in relatively intimate ways; and it reveals
the interaction, the relationships between these two personalities.
Mildred Friedman, curator of Gehry's first major retrospective
in 1986 at the Walker Art Center, has crafted an architecture
book that will appeal to not just architects, a rare and
welcome feat. Gehry may be the contemporary architect
able to do so with his name and eye-catching designs, but
I doubt the same could apply to Gehry's Complete Works.
The inclusion of the clients' insights into the building
of their houses and working with Gehry broaden the focus
from architecture to living in architecture. The
accompanying photography combine with the interviews to
capture not only what makes Gehry's architecture unique
but what makes each house a home.
* Minus a
new Gehry house that may or may not happen.
US: 
CA: 
UK: 
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