's name is said in the same breath as those of leading architects of the 20th and 21st centuries – including. The Los Angeles-based architect and his practice, Gehry Partners, became prolific pioneers of building design through Gehry’s expressive experimentations with form, space and material, challenging the status quo with their intensity, allure and unexpected nature.
‘His sometimes controversial, but always arresting body of work has been variously described as iconoclastic, rambunctious and impermanent, but the jury, in making this award, commends this restless spirit that has made his buildings a unique expression of contemporary society and its ambivalent values,' the Pritzker Prize jury wrote in their citation in 1989. His career spans buildings of all typologies and sizes – from offices to pavilions, and from single-family houses to skyscrapers.
Asked about how his career changed after Bilbao, in our 2011 interview, he said: 'There's a measure of credibility that accrued to me after Bilbao. It wasn't only that it made the community happy, it earned a lot of money for the community and revenues for the city. And the building was built on budget. So all of those things were helpful. And when I go there, people seem very happy with the building – the Guggenheim people are happy and a lot of the artists are happy.