Architect Frank Gehry will celebrate his 85th birthday

Frank Owen Gehry, Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, 1993 - 1997

Toronto/Prague - The houses designed by architect Frank Gehry, who will turn 85 on February 28, are tourist attractions everywhere. The undulating structures, often resembling sculptures, are among the masterpieces of world architecture. Gehry's signature is also present in Prague's Dancing House on Rašínovo nábřeží, where the architects were freely inspired by the facades of surrounding buildings, mostly Art Nouveau with turrets. They created a glass tower and narrowed it in the middle until it began to resemble a woman's body.
    Among the most famous works of the Canadian-American architect is the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, which towers in the city center like a gigantic iron flower. The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain resembles a spaceship: its structure of limestone, glass, and metal is covered with panels of titanium sheets. The oddly shaped gelatin dessert also resembles Gehry's house in Seattle, USA, named Experience Music, with blue, red, silver, and shiny walls that wave like curtains in the wind and do not recognize a right angle.
    Gehry was born on February 28, 1929, as Ephraim Owen Goldberg; in his grandfather's hardware store in Toronto, he examined the insides of broken toasters and clocks and built fairytale cities from spare parts. His father's businesses were not successful, so they moved to Los Angeles. There, Gehry installed prefabricated dining nooks in homes during the day and studied architecture at the University of Southern California in the evenings. The former passionate hockey player and admirer of Jaromír Jágr also worked in paper design, giving names to cardboard chairs like Krosček, Vysoká hůl, or Power Play.