Renowned architect Frank Gehry will speak as part of the Pratt Institute School of Architecture’s fall 2010 lecture and events series at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, November 10, 2010, in Memorial Hall Auditorium on Pratt’s Brooklyn Campus. The event is free and open to the public, however, seating priority will be given to Pratt students and faculty members with valid ID at 2:30 p.m. Members of the public will be admitted at 2:50 p.m. should seating be available.
Gehry will converse with Julie Iovine, executive editor of The Architect’s Newspaper, and Yael Reisner, author of “Architecture and Beauty: Conversations with Architects about a Troubled Relationship” (Wiley, 2010), which is based on 16 interviews Reisner conducted with some of the world’s most creative designers, including Gehry, on their beliefs, experiences, and position on aesthetics. The 16 designers discuss their formative experiences, creative processes and motivations, and whether they think that beauty is integral or nonessential to architecture.
Gehry’s notable projects include the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao; Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles; and the “Dancing House” building, Prague. He received the Pritzker Prize, the world’s most prestigious architecture award, in 1989.
Recent projects include 8 Spruce Street, a 76-story skyscraper in New York; a concert hall for the New World Symphony in Miami Beach; and another branch of the Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi. Most ambitious of all is the massive Grand Street project, a plan to entirely remake the thoroughfare leading from Los Angeles City Hall to Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Over the years, Gehry has lent his designs to a number of products outside the field of architecture, including the Wyborovka Vodka bottle, a wristwatch for Fossil, jewelry for Tiffany & Co., and the World Cup of Hockey trophy. In 2005, the architect and his work were the subject of a feature-length documentary film, “Sketches of Frank Gehry,” by director Sydney Pollack.
Gehry established his practice in Los Angeles in 1962. The Gehry partnership, Gehry Partners, LLP, was formed in 2001 and currently supports a staff of over 120 people.