Loyola Law School, Los Ángeles, California, 1981-1984

Frank Owen Gehry began his professional practice as an independent architect in 1962, but it was in 1978, with the completion of his striking private home in Santa Monica, California, that his work began to occupy a central position in contemporary architecture.

Since then, increasingly important buildings and commissions - spanning the length and breadth of the globe, from Los Angeles to Japan to Paris - have made Gehry one of the world's most celebrated and admired architects. In recognition of this, in 1989 he was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize, considered the most prestigious award an architect can receive during his lifetime.

Having since survived those perilous fifteen minutes of fame, Gehry's place among the canons of twentieth-century architecture is guaranteed, and may even outlast the very idea of canon. While the reasons for these plaudits are obvious to almost everyone-they are clearly articulated in a set of highly expressive and attractively rigorous buildings-they are less so to Gehry himself. Still asking basic questions about architecture, concerned about the quality and impact of his work, unsure and even wary of his own success, Gehry remains a modest man who bears the role of famous architect with a certain resignation...[+]