Frank Gehry is nothing if not media savvy. But this is the first time even he has had an entire exhibit devoted to a single project.
Saturday saw the first opening of ‘Frank O. Gehry: Design Process and the Lewis House’ at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The point-by-point survey of the un-built commission includes 120 architectural models, drawings, photographs and videos from the project.
The project gave Gehry an unprecedented opportunity to experiment and, in the process, achieve the formal and technological breakthroughs that have informed all his later work and made him one of the most influential architects working today.
While the Lewis House was ultimately not built, the project is unique for the sheer volume and range of work produced, and its relationship to Gehry’s other work, in Bilbao, Barcelona, Prague, Dusseldorf and Berlin — which is also represented in the exhibition.
