Frank O.Gehry: The Complete Works - Tapa dura

One of the world's great architects, Frank O. Gehry has produced an astonishing body of work over the past forty years. This pioneering designer continues to receive worldwide praise from both peers and critics as the most talented and influential architect working today. With the artistry of a sculptor and the brilliant articulation of an engineer, Gehry creates complex yet sensual buildings that are lyrical constructions defying categorization. Assembled by Francesco Dal Co and Kurt Forster, two of architecture's most important writers and historians, in collaboration with Gehry, this comprehensive, critical documentation -- the first major monograph ever published -- surveys his visionary architecture, from his early houses to his powerful recent works.

Bursting onto the scene in Southern California in the early 1960s, Gehry's revolutionary remodeling of his own house in 1978 -- the transformation of a suburban Dutch colonial into an architectural collage juxtaposing chain-link fence, plywood, exposed joists, and corrugated iron -- brought him international notoriety. His most important building to date, the recently completed Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain -- nearly twice the size of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris -- is a monumental 256,000-square-foot curvilinear masterpiece made of shimmering titanium, glass, and Spanish limestone.

This eagerly awaited and unprecedented publication -- with over three hundred projects and a thousand illustrations -- includes, among others, the controversial American Center in Paris; Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis; Nationale-Nedelanden Building (Fred and Ginger Building) in Prague; Vitra Headquarters in Weil am Rhein, Germany; California Aerospace Museum; Loyola Law School in Los Angeles; Chiat Day Mojo Building in Venice, California; and Boston Children's Museum. Also shown are his provocative designs for houses -- many of them in California -- as well as his installations, exhibitions, and ingenious corrugated cardboard furniture. Also presented is Gehry's largest U.S. commission to date, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, a cultural landmark and civic monument for his hometown of Los Angeles, which promises to change the concept of "public space" for generations to come.

Francesco Dal Co, Italy's most renowned architectural historian and critic, teaches at the University Institute of Architecture of Venice, edits Casabella, and is the architectural editor for Electa. He has written and contributed to many books, including The American City, Modern Architecture (with Manfredo Tafuri), and The Monacelli Press titles Luis Barragán, Villa Ottolenghi, and Sverre Fehn.

Kurt W. Forster is founding director of the Getty Research Center for the History of Art and the Humanities and is professor of the history of art theory of architecture at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

Hadley Soutter Arnold writes frequently on architecture and design.