Frank Gehry Quotes

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

You have to do every detail on every bloody piece of the building. You have to know how the engineering works. You have to know how the fittings go together. You have to master the mechanical, electrical, acoustical - everything.

The back of Saint Peter's is one of the finest pieces of architecture I've ever seen.

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

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.

People say, "This is the world the way it is, and don't bother me." Then when somebody does something different, real architecture, the push-back is amazing. People resist it. At first it's new and scary.

Artists dismiss me as an architect, so I'm not in their box, and architects dismiss me as an artist, so I'm not in their box.

What I have learned about museum buildings is that buildings have to have iconic presentations. The position of the art museum vis-a-vis other civic buildings needs to be hierarchal in the community. It has to be equal to the library and the courthouse.

China is building cities for a 20 to 40 percent increase in population. India is quickly growing. The carbon footprints of that and other development around the world are overwhelming.

One of my unsung heroes is Erich Mendelsohn. I met him when I was a student and he was a cranky old man and very unpleasant. But if you go to his Einstein Tower in Potsdam, Germany you see an enormous intellect at work with a language that was personal and new. It has a sense of urban design and of theater and procession I hadn't seen before.

The architect Borromini's Quattro Fontane, a little church in Rome, is one of the most beautiful rooms in history.

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.

Picasso could use everyone's paintings and transform them into his own. He was using ideas from all of his contemporaries.

Art is about people. I think the discussion about whether architecture is art or not is lamebrain.

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

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

There are places that are so designed they're unlivable.

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.

For me, every day is a new thing.

Generally people are afraid. They pretend they aren’t; it’s part of the denial. We’re all part of it. As much as we pretend otherwise, we want what’s comfortable, and we’re afraid of the different. We’re afraid of change. It happened in Los Angeles, too, when the first models of Disney Hall were shown. You should have heard the outcry from the public, critics and press. It was called “broken crockery,” “outlandish” and blah blah blah. Of course now the feeling is different.

When I start my class I ask the students to write their signatures on pieces of paper and put them on a table. I have them look at them, and I point out, "They're all different, aren't they? That's you, that's you, that's you, that's you."

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

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.

I'm a do-gooder liberal.

I am just relating to the world we live in. I see some order in it, even though it looks like mush.

We deny our nature to build and create and then wonder why there is so much alienation and dissatisfaction.

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

I'm inspired by a lot of stuff. I always was interested in sculpture and painting and music and literature and all those things. There's no one thing.

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.

I used to read more when I was a kid than I do now. It was all sort of fuel for the fire to teach you how to think and how to make things and it informed the architecture that I was doing. It's better coming in with that history and that kind of knowledge and depth of understanding of humanity that is very important for building buildings - for understanding people and how they should live and how you could make your lives better and stuff like that.

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

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

Cardboard is another material that's ubiquitous and everybody hates, yet when I made furniture with it everybody loved it.

I do my best to choose carefully. If I don’t feel that collaboration is going to happen, I say no. Think about it. These projects can involve a five-to-seven-year partnership. If you don’t feel comfortable with someone, you can’t get rid of them. I just walked away from a job for that reason. Every one of these projects is an emotional investment, like falling in love. You’ve got to believe in it and you’ve got to like the people you work with.

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

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

There's a drive in us to express ourselves in some way or form. We pick up whatever material is available. It's primitive. Kids see sand on the beach, build something and show their parents: "Look what I did, Mama." It's necessary to us.

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

As much as we pretend otherwise, we want what's comfortable, and we're afraid of the different. We're afraid of change.

We should celebrate variety rather than conformity and allow people to express themselves. That we don't is more of our denial.

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.

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.

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.

Here we are surrounded by material that's being manufactured in unimaginable quantities worldwide and is used everywhere. I don't like it, no one likes it, and yet it's pervasive. We don't even see it.

The thing is, I hate the celebrity architect thing. I just do my work.

Everyone has a desire, if not a need, to use their individual signatures. Whenever people meet to talk about a project, even stuffy old businessmen, they say they want to create something new.

It should begin much earlier with arts education in the American school system, which is sadly deficient.

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