The creator of the whimsical houses, Frank Gehry, is celebrating his ninety-fifth birthday

New York/Prague - The buildings of architect Frank Gehry evoke awe and admiration. Wavy structures, often resembling sculptures, are jewels of world architecture. Gehry's signature is also found in the Prague Dancing House on Rašínovo nábřeží, where the architects drew inspiration from the facades of the surrounding buildings, mostly Art Nouveau and with turrets. They created a glass tower and narrowed it in the middle, which began to resemble the female body. Gehry, who will celebrate his ninety-fifth birthday on February 28, won the prestigious Pritzker Prize for architecture in 1989. He lives in Santa Monica, California, and holds Canadian and American citizenship.

"I try to design buildings in response to human feelings," explained the guru of world architecture once. He cited sources of inspiration as varied as Indian sculptures of the god Shiva or the stuffed carp his grandmother prepared before cooking. Among his most famous works is the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, which towers in the city center like a giant iron flower, showcasing exposed metal beams, screws, and pipes, stone stairs, and light wood. After its opening in October 2003, it became a symbol of the city, although its appearance has been compared by some critics to a cone of fries. However, the residents of Los Angeles have fallen in love with the building, and artists and audiences appreciate its acoustics.

The famous Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, from 1997, designed by Gehry, resembles a spaceship. The structure made of limestone, glass, and metal covered with panels of titanium sheet defies all traditional forms. The apparent external chaos of curves, arches, waves, and spirals transitions inside into absolute order. Gehry's house in Seattle, USA, named Experience Music, looks like a strangely shaped gelatin dessert.

The Louis Vuitton Foundation building in Paris appears from a distance like a cluster of sailboats, housing a collection of contemporary art. The 2014 object consists of more than 3,500 glass panels, and inside the building, there are 11 exhibition halls. Recently, Gehry designed the new modern headquarters for Facebook in Menlo Park, California, a seven-story headquarters for the same company in London's West End, and the colorful Biomuseum in Panama.

Frank Gehry was born on February 28, 1929, in Toronto, Canada, as Ephraim Owen Goldberg in a poor family of second-generation Polish Jews (his grandfather left Łódź in 1908). As a young man in his grandfather's Toronto hardware store, he examined the insides of broken toasters and clocks, building fairy-tale cities from spare parts. His father's businesses struggled, so the family moved to Los Angeles. Gehry, who changed his name in 1956, installed prefabricated dining nooks in houses during the day and studied architecture at the University of Southern California in the evenings. He graduated in 1951 and then studied urban planning at Harvard University from 1956 to 1957.

In 1962, he started his own firm in Los Angeles, initially working on shopping center projects and similar commercial contracts. In the late 1970s, he renovated his simple house in Santa Monica for the first time. He used wire fencing, corrugated metal enclosures, and bare wooden beams. The house was distasteful to the neighbors, and they hated the construction - one of them would walk their dog near it. "It was not a provocation; I simply had little money for the renovation," Gehry insisted. "Then I thought it was aesthetically interesting. So why not turn low costs into an advantage?"

The former passionate hockey player and admirer of Jaromír Jágr also worked in paper design, giving names to cardboard chairs such as Krosček, Vysoká hůl, and Power Play. After being introduced to the market, his furniture became a hit and is still studied by design students. He concluded the cardboard craze in the 1980s with the legendary chair Little Beaver.

Gehry, who has also tried his hand as a set designer, designed jewelry and various trophies, is married for the second time and has four children. In the autumn of 2021, his work was presented in connection with the Czech environment from the perspective of Czech creators or collaborators in an exhibition in the Winternitz Villa in Prague titled: Frank Gehry: Through the Eyes of Czechs.