Frank O Gehry

The USC School of Architecture will honor Frank O. Gehry with its Distinguished Alumnus Award at the USC Architectural Guild's 28th annual dinner Wednesday at Town and Gown. Gehry and his firm have received 25 American Institute of Architecture awards. Among his firm's projects are the Children's Museum, Loyola Law School and the Aerospace Museum. Past recipients of the award include Jon A. Jerde and Rafael Soriano.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is suing architect Frank Gehry, alleging there are serious design flaws in the Stata Center, a building celebrated for its unconventional walls and radical angles. The Boston school alleges that the center, completed in spring 2004, has persistent leaks, drainage problems and mold growing on its brick exterior.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani on Tuesday threw his administration's support--and money--behind the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum's proposal to build a $678-million museum along the East River off Wall Street. Though the project still must win the approval of a series of governmental agencies, the city's support makes it a real possibility that Santa Monica architect Frank O.

Frank Gehry's spontaneous brainstorm seemed like a good idea over a couple of cocktails with one of his favorite artists, Mariza, the glamorous fado singer from Portugal who performs Sunday at Disney Hall. Why not set the stage for her show, Gehry suggested, by turning the sleek, ultra-modern auditorium into an intimate, folksy taberna, like those bohemian Lisbon hangouts where fans have soaked up this mournful, melodic music since the 1800s?

Dagmar Sedlakova's discerning nose turns up at the mention of the new building on Jiraskovo Square that was co-designed by Los Angeles-based architect Frank O. Gehry. Her words are judicious, but they carry the reproach of a schoolmarm admonishing a band of truants. Disrespectful. Unsuitable. Where is the self-restraint? "Prague is changing too quickly," Sedlakova lectures from her 18th century office in the heart of this medieval city. "We risk losing the spirit of our city.

Architect Frank O. Gehry and leaders behind Walt Disney Concert Hall--planned new home at the Music Center for the Los Angeles Philharmonic--met for 2 1/2 hours Thursday to discuss whether Gehry will continue to be involved with the project. There was no resolution but some progress, according to sources close to the project.

"Frank O. GEHRY: Work in Progress," opening Sunday at the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Los Angeles, highlights the architect's design process through an examination of his firm's most current work. Focusing on 10 to 12 projects, the exhibition, composed of sketches, photographs, study models and final design models, traces the evolution of Gehry Partners' recent work from inception to final design.

When Frank O. Gehry wasn't chosen to design the new St. Vibiana's Cathedral in downtown Los Angeles, I was very happy. After seeing Gehry's latest building creation, the "Czech wreck" in Prague ("Fred and Ginger and Frank," by Dean E. Murphy, July 14), I'm now ecstatic. JOHN BRODHEAD La Canada * I teach cultural, urban and architectural history at UCLA and am writing to protest the misleading tone of Murphy's article.

Once a quiet presence in the background, Diane Disney Miller, daughter of Walt Disney, is expected to move to the helm of the downtown Walt Disney Concert Hall project. The project's leadership not only plans to accept her offer to use family money to protect the interests of the hall's architect, Frank O. Gehry, but also is naming her co-chair of a new project oversight board, The Times has learned. A formal announcement is expected today, according to a spokesman for the project.

Frank O. Gehry is among the most acclaimed and sought-after architects in the world, but the Internal Revenue Service is seeking the Los Angeles luminary's firm for other reasons--about $1 million in back taxes and penalties. The IRS slapped Frank O. Gehry & Associates Inc. with a tax-deficiency notice earlier this year, asserting that Gehry had awarded himself "unreasonable compensation" in 1992 and '93, according to U.S. Tax Court records.

Architect Frank Gehry's trademark metal-clad forms are coming to a $2-billion residential and entertainment complex in Lehi, Utah, which is about 30 miles south of Salt Lake City and has a population of about 36,000. City officials this week approved plans by Brandt Andersen, owner of the Utah Flash basketball team, to build an 85-acre, Gehry-designed development that includes an amphitheater, hotel, shopping center, restaurants, residences and man-made lakes.

SINCE Frank Gehry was hired nearly two years ago to design a massive mixed-use project along Grand Avenue, he has clashed repeatedly and sometimes bitterly with the developer, New York's Related Cos. Barring some sudden rapprochement, it now seems unlikely that Gehry will return for the planned second and third phases of the project. But the plan, which the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will consider this morning, has turned a significant corner in recent weeks.

Architect Frank Gehry, renowned for his daring and whimsical urban designs, will create his first playground -- at the historic Battery public park in Lower Manhattan. The playground will be part of a larger redevelopment of Manhattan's southernmost tip, best known to tourists as the disembarkation point for ferries to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Gehry's playground design, which is expected to be unveiled later this year, will cost about $4 million.

Motorcycles and sailboats helped Frank Gehry finally get a building here. The cycles came into play when veteran chief executive Barry Diller, now head of IAC/InterActiveCorp, joined an outing of the celebrity Guggenheim Motorcycle Club in Bilbao, Spain, the home, of course, to one of Gehry's best-known structures, the Guggenheim Museum.

Celebrated Los Angeles architect Frank Gehry will begin a two-phase design project for the Pasadena Playhouse that will include a new 300- to 400-seat theater to expand the Playhouse campus, as well as redesigning the interior of the Playhouse's existing balcony performance space, the Carrie Hamilton Theatre.

LOS ANGELES architect Frank O. Gehry has been named to oversee a 10-year plan for a major expansion of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The plan calls for Gehry, best known for the visual impact of his signature metallic curves in such projects as downtown's Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain, to create new space without disturbing the landmark neoclassical exterior of the 1928 museum.

When the name Frank Gehry is mentioned these days, Disney Hall in downtown Los Angeles probably comes to mind. Less well known are the 30-some houses Gehry has designed. Of these, about 25 were built, all locally. One is the Schnabel, which bears its owners' name. The Brentwood home was designed for Rockwell Schnabel, then ambassador to Finland, and his wife, Marna, a graduate of USC with a degree in architecture. Gehry later called her "an active participant in the design process."

When the Walt Disney Concert Hall opens for business next month, the world's eyes will be upon it, partly because the concert hall is expected to rejuvenate the fortunes of downtown Los Angeles, partly because the building looks like a giant space tulip (incongruous truths worthy of its quiet yet provocative architect) but mostly because that architect is Frank O. Gehry.

Already boasting the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain's Basque region has unveiled its second work by world-renowned architect Frank Gehry, a fanciful display of glimmering and cascading titanium ribbons, housing a hotel at the center of one of the country's oldest wineries.

Plans were unveiled Monday to build an ethereal, fully transparent museum designed by architect Frank Gehry that will house a contemporary art collection in Paris. Bernard Arnault, chairman of French luxury goods empire LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA, described the museum as "more of a cloud than a building."