Frank Gehry Quotes & Sayings

The whole can be greater than the sum of it's parts, that we all have something to put in the pie to make it better, and that the collaborative interaction works. — Frank Gehry

Democracy, obviously, is something we don't want to give up, but it does create chaos. It means the guy next door can do what he wants, and it creates a collision of thinking. In cities, that means people build whatever they want. — Frank Gehry

Man, there's another freedom out there, and it comes from somewhere else, and that somewhere else is the place I'm interested in. — Frank Gehry

Creativity is about play and a kind of willingness to go with your intuition. It's crucial to an artist. If you know where you are going and what you are going to do, why do it? I think I learned that from the artists, from my grandmother, from all the creative people I've spent time with over the years. — Frank Gehry

I don't think all buildings have to be iconic, but the history of the world has shown us that cultures build iconic buildings for their major public buildings. — Frank Gehry

The message I hope to have sent is just the example of being yourself. I tell this to my students: It's not about copying me or my logic systems. It's about allowing yourself to be yourself. — Frank Gehry

My buildings are all on budget. — Frank Gehry

Each project, I suffer like I'm starting over again in life. There's a lot of healthy insecurity that fuels this stuff. — Frank Gehry

I make a model of the site. There are some obvious things: where the entrance should be, where the cars have to go in. You start to get the scale of it. You understand the client's needs, and what the client is hoping for and yearning for. — Frank Gehry

If I knew where I was going, I wouldn't do it. When I can predict or plan it, I don't do it. — Frank Gehry

You have freedom, so you have to make choices - and at the point when I make a choice, the building starts to look like a Frank Gehry building. It's a signature. — Frank Gehry

I have always thought that L.A. is a motor city that developed linear downtowns. — Frank Gehry

I don't know why people hire architects and then tell them what to do. — Frank Gehry

I think my best skill as an architect is the achievement of hand-to-eye coordination. I am able to transfer a sketch into a model into the building. — Frank Gehry

I can't just decide myself what's being built. Someone decides what they want, then I work for them. — Frank Gehry

Architecture is a service business. An architect is given a program, budget, place, and schedule. Sometimes the end product rises to art - or at least people call it that. — Frank Gehry

I love working. I don't know what the word vacation means. — Frank Gehry

I don't want to do architecture that's dry and dull. — Frank Gehry

Liquid architecture. It's like jazz - you improvise, you work together, you play off each other, you make something, they make something. And I think it's a way of - for me, it's a way of trying to understand the city, and what might happen in the city. — Frank Gehry

I know I draw without taking my pen off the page. I just keep going, and that my drawings I think of them as scribbles. I don't think they mean anything to anybody except to me, and then at the end of the day, the end of the project, they wheel out these little drawings and they're damn close to what the finished building is and it's the drawing ... — Frank Gehry

Chicago's one of the rare places where architecture is more visible. — Frank Gehry

The culture of France is unique because it's a culture that has a high priority on the arts, more than any other place in the world in our time since Greece. So as a practicing artist, if you will, this is home ground. They love us, so music, literature, art continues to be the center. — Frank Gehry

I was in Peru and visited a building near Lima built by the Incas. It was low in height, with no windows at all, but all the way in the back there was air movement. And I couldn't figure out how they'd done it; it was incredible. — Frank Gehry

You can look anywhere and find inspiration. — Frank Gehry

My father probably - he had flashes of creativity - he used to do store windows for fruit stores that he worked in and stuff. — Frank Gehry

My only extravagance in life is my sailboat. I'm bonkers about that, but other than that, I don't spend money on myself. — Frank Gehry

I work from the inside out. — Frank Gehry

There are a great many things about architecture that are hidden from the untrained eye. — Frank Gehry

Your work may be great and not make its way into the big picture ... like Van Gogh ... so who's to say what's good and bad? — Frank Gehry

I think my attitudes about the past are very traditional. You can't ignore history; you can't escape it even if you want to. You might as well know where you come from, and you might as well know that everything has been done in some shape or form. — Frank Gehry

I'm a leftie, and I've always believed in doing things on a modest scale. — Frank Gehry

Green issues have been used as a marketing tool. Sometimes these green claims are completely meaningless. — Frank Gehry

For me, every day is a new thing. — Frank Gehry

If you know where it's going, it's not worth doing. — Frank Gehry

It's not new that architecture can profoundly affect a place, sometimes transform it. Architecture and any art can transform a person, even save someone. — Frank Gehry

My father was an urchin that lived in Hell's Kitchen. He was part of a family of nine. I mean, there were times that were better and worse, but mostly, by the time we got to L.A., they'd lost whatever they had. And it was a sad time. And both he and I became truck drivers for different companies. — Frank Gehry

The idealism [in architecture] is in the formal arrangement, the relationship to the city, the use of materials that are available to me. That's where I say our powers are limited. — Frank Gehry

Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness. — Frank Gehry

There is stuff I would have liked to have done. But there are no sour grapes. — Frank Gehry

I've been told I have the biggest ego in the world and that it manifests itself when you come to me and say, 'I don't like this' or 'I want a change' ... and that I relish that because my ego's so big I think I can solve whatever you throw at me and make it even better. I enjoy the interaction and the challenge. — Frank Gehry

I am obsessed with architecture. It is true, I am restless, trying to find myself as an architect and how best to contribute in this world filled with contradiction, disparity and inequality, even passion and opportunity. — Frank Gehry

I think people care. If not, why do so many people spend money going on vacations to see architecture? They go to the Parthenon, to Chartres, to the Sydney Opera House. They go to Bilbao ... Something compels them, and yet we live surrounded by everything but great architecture. — Frank Gehry

Not every person has the same kinds of talents, so you discover what yours are and work with them. — Frank Gehry

Take what comes your way. Do the best with it. Be responsible as you can and something good will happen ... — Frank Gehry

The present is filled with flotsam and irony and chaos and disorder in all arenas, political and sociological. I think we have to work in the present even if it's awkward, even if it's not necessarily good, even if we don't understand it ourselves. You only find out 10, maybe 20 years later what was going on. — Frank Gehry

People ask me if I'm an artist or an architect. But I think they're the same. — Frank Gehry

The game is if the orchestra can hear each other, they play better. If they play better and there's a tangible feeling between the orchestra and the audience, if they feel each other, the audience responds and the orchestra feels it. — Frank Gehry

On certain projects, on big public projects, people definitely are interested in making them greener, but on smaller projects with tight budgets it can be harder. — Frank Gehry

Democracy is a problem and we don't want to get rid of it. — Frank Gehry

Look, architecture has a lot of places to hide behind, a lot of excuses. 'The client made me do this.' 'The city made me do this.' 'Oh, the budget.' I don't believe that anymore. — Frank Gehry

In the end, the character of a civilization is encased in its structures. — Frank Gehry

You've got to bumble forward into the unknown. — Frank Gehry

This neo-minimalism super cold stuff is weird to me. I need a place where I can come home and take my shoes off. — Frank Gehry

In an ideal world, pressure should come from below and from the top. — Frank Gehry

I found the material that people hated the most and used the most. So, I was going and try and see if I could play with it sculpturally. — Frank Gehry

You have to build up a credibility before the support comes to you. — Frank Gehry

There are people who design buildings that are not technically and financially good, and there are those who do. Two categories - simple. — Frank Gehry

I never said I was opposed to the LEED program or to green building - I'm not. — Frank Gehry

A lot of people don't get it, but I design from the inside out so that the finished product looks inevitable somehow. I think it's important to create spaces that people like to be in, that are humanistic. — Frank Gehry

I promised a lot of people I'd slow down when I turned 80. — Frank Gehry

You have to be optimistic. I still have doubts and conflicts, but the bottom line is, I believe in the future. — Frank Gehry

Let the experience begin! — Frank Gehry

Talent is liquified trouble. — Frank Gehry

Most of our cities built since the war are bland. They're modernist, they're cold, and now architects want to go back to that. — Frank Gehry

Your best work is your expression of yourself. Now, you may not be the greatest at it, but when you do it, you're the only expert. — Frank Gehry

A well-designed home has to be very comfortable. I can't stand the aesthetes, the minimal thing. I can't live that way. My home has to be filled with stuff - mostly paintings, sculpture, my fish lamps, cardboard furniture, lots of books. — Frank Gehry

I approach each project with a new insecurity, almost like the first project I ever did, and I get the sweats, I go in and start working, I'm not sure where I'm going. — Frank Gehry

One of my greatest influences is the Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini. — Frank Gehry

There is a backlash against me and everyone who has done buildings that have movement and feeling. — Frank Gehry

Some people may say my curved panels look like sails. Well, I am a sailor, so I guess I probably do use that metaphor in my work - though not consciously. — Frank Gehry

I used to sketch - that's the way I thought out loud. Then they made a book of my sketches, and I got self-conscious, so now I don't do it much. — Frank Gehry

The best advice I've received is to be yourself. The best artists do that. — Frank Gehry

Well, I've always just - I've never really gone out looking for work. I always waited for it to sort of hit me on the head. — Frank Gehry

Architecture
is a small piece of this human equation, but for those of us who practice it,
we believe in its potential to make a difference, to enlighten and to enrich the
human experience, to penetrate the barriers of misunderstandin g and provide a
beautiful context for life's drama. — Frank Gehry

There are a lot of questions about whether architecture is art. The people who ask that think pretty tract houses are architecture. But that doesn't hold up. — Frank Gehry

When I was a kid, my father didn't really have much hope for me. He thought I was a dreamer; he didn't think I would amount to anything. My mother also. — Frank Gehry

I don't know how to overcome this perception that I'm extravagant. — Frank Gehry

Time is just a blur for me. I don't know what - I don't even know where I am sometimes. — Frank Gehry

When I went to Harvard and studied planning, I found I didn't have the skills or the strength to become the kind of public person who could go out and lobby government agencies. — Frank Gehry

And I realized, when I'd come in to the meetings with these corrugated metal and chain link stuff, and people would just look at me like I'd just landed from Mars. But I couldn't do anything else. That was my response to the people and the time. — Frank Gehry

Anybody I talk to agrees that maybe 2 percent of the building environment since the war, we could call architecture. — Frank Gehry

I like the idea of collaboration - it pushes you. It's a richer experience ... — Frank Gehry

The fact is I'm an opportunist. I'll take materials around me, materials on my table, and work with them as I'm searching for an idea that works. — Frank Gehry

I found myself starting architecture with a deep social, Jewish, liberal conscience, and the belief that architecture is for the people. It was a do-gooder base; I was born and raised that way. I was for blacks, whites, Italians, Poles, whatever. — Frank Gehry

I don't make things with my hands, although I studied woodworking and made furniture. — Frank Gehry

You see a lot of so-called architecture that part of the ego trip overpowers the functionality and the budget and all that stuff. — Frank Gehry

I refuse to work unless I get paid, so I don't get a lot of work sometimes. — Frank Gehry

For me, every day is a new thing. I approach each project with a new insecurity, almost like the first project I ever did. And I get the sweats. I go in and start working, I'm not sure where I'm going. If I knew where I was going I wouldn't do it. — Frank Gehry

I would like to make a building as intellectually driven as it is sculptural and as positive as it would be acceptable to hope. — Frank Gehry

Architecture has always been a very idealistic profession. It's about making the world a better place, and it works over the generations because people go on vacation and they look for it. — Frank Gehry

I think you've got to accept that certain things are in process that you can't change, that you can't overwhelm. The chaos of our cities, the randomness of our lives, the unpredictability of where you're going to be in ten years from now - all of those things are weighing on us, and yet there is a certain glimmer of control. If you act a certain way, and talk a certain way, you're going to draw certain forces to you. — Frank Gehry

Bilbao opened in 1997. It was only ten years later that I was asked to do another museum. A lot of other people got work because of Bilbao. — Frank Gehry