Crayon Box Building

The Crayon Box building was designed by me and inspired by Frank Gehry. My Building is different and stands out. I decided to place it in the Bronx, on Dr. Martin Luther King Blv. (University Ave) between Tenny Pl and W175th Street. It's going to be a new and innovative building for High Schools. It'll hold about seven to eight thousand students. Outside, there wil be foods stands, and vending and seating areas. It'll make the Bronx a spectacular tourist attraction and will bring gentrification. The area will be well known and safer.

Frank Gehry

Part I- Frank Gehry's Early Life

Ephraim Owen Goldberg, or as we know him, Frank Gehry, is a very well known sculptor and architect. He’s built many museums, and tourist attractions. Inventor of the deconstructionist-postmodern style, he has influenced many present day architects and designers. Frank Gehry, 78, currently lives in Santa Monica and still has his practice in Los Angeles.
He was born into a Polish and Jewish family in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on February 28, 1929. He immigrated to the United States in 1947 after his father got sick. He lived in California with his parents, Irving and Thelma Goldberg.
Gehry’s mother, Thelma Caplanski, left Poland with her parents, who had strong Jewish beliefs, and moved to Canada where they decided to change their name to Caplan. Her father owned a hardware store and was also the president of a synagogue. Frank’s father, Irving Goldberg was born to Polish parents in Brooklyn and later on moved to Canada for work. As soon as Thelma and Irving met they fell in love and got married.
As a child, Frank Gehry was greatly influenced by his grandmother, Caplan. He would watch her put live carp in a bathtub and would observe the movement of the fish. This influenced his early work. He was very creative and together they built little cities out of scraps of wood.
Before he changed his name to Frank Gehry, he married Anita Snyder. They had two girls and then divorced in the mid 60’s. He remarried and had two sons, Alejandro and Sámi, with his current wife, Berta Isabel Aquilera, an immigrant from Panama.

Part II- Frank Gehry's Schooling and Early Works

Like an American loves baseball, Frank being Canadian, enjoyed hockey. He even started a hockey league in his office, and in 2004, designed the Hockey World Cup. In California, his first job was driving a delivery truck. He did this while going to school at Los Angeles City College. He studied at the University of Southern California’s School (USC) of Architecture from 1949 to 1951. As a full time student, he met a fellow architect, Arnold Schreir, and with him, created his first work, the Gehry Residence. His sketches were published in Cross-Culture Magazine because the editor was his art professor. He left school and worked for Victor Gruen Associates in a Los Angeles firm. After gaining some experience, he returned to USC for his Bachelor of Architecture degree and graduated in 1954.
Gehry joined the army with the title of Private First Class, and was stationed in Fort Benning, Georgia right after school. He was soon designing furniture. This was the first of what would be an amazing collection of furniture by the young architect. He used different materials to build sculptures on the base.
After the army, Gehry studied City Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in Massachusetts. However, he was displeased by the vagueness of the major and only finished out one year. In 1957, the architect returned to the west coast and once again worked with Victor Gruen Associates and apprenticed with Pereira and Luckman, and worked with other firms before opening his own, Frank O. Gehry and Associates, Inc in 1962.

Part III- Frank Gehry's Architectual Style and Influences

Gehry has been categorized as the founder, or inventor of the deconstructionist style. He has also learned to mesh the postmodern style and the deconstructionist style together.
Deconstruction is a development of postmodern architecture that began in the early 1980’s. In this style, unconventional materials are used. It defies the “normal” architectural style rules such as “form follows function,” “purity of form,” “truth to materials.” Originally, the French philosopher, Jacque Derrida, influenced some of the architects known as Deconstroctivists. Many architects associated with the name have distanced themselves from the term, but society has embraced the new modern architectural style.
Postmodernism is a style whose first examples were seen in the 1950’s. In postmodernism, styles collide and there are new ways of viewing familiar things. Ornaments are used and are combined with angles and unusual surfaces. Modernism and postmodernism are similar but have different goals. Modernism sticks to the old rules of “truth to materials,” and hardly uses ornaments, whereas postmodernism seeks excitement in using different angles, retro ornaments and using other styles as references as well.
The Gehry Residence, one of the architect’s early works, is Frank Gehry’s own house. It was built with unconventional materials like broken pieces of steel and chain link fences. The structure was built around the original house. It was made during the time when Gehry was still trying to find his architectural style, and when it was considered one of the earliest deconstroctivist buildings, he denied that it reflected this style of architecture.

Part IV- Frank Gehry's Monumental Works

Frank Gehry designed the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Downtown Los Angeles, California. The project was launched in 1987 when Lillian Disney donated $50 million to the construction of the new site. Gehry completed his designs and construction began in 1992. It was completed in 1996, but due to the lack of fundraising, some things were left unfinished. It opened in 2003 and seats 2,265 people. The project cost an estimated total of $274 million. The building is a clear example of deconstructivism and features Gehry’s trademark, steel cladding.
The Guggenheim Museum is a modern and contemporary art museum also designed by Gehry, located in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain. This is only one of the several museums of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. It opened to the public in 1996 and was immediately considered one of the greatest buildings in the style of deconstructivism. The building was intended to look like a ship and has panels that resemble fish scales, of course influenced by his childhood memories. It has become a popular tourist attraction.
The Dancing House is an office building in downtown Prague, Czech Republic. The building was co-designed by Vlado Miluni, a Czech architect. The construction only took two years, starting construction in 1994 and being completed in 1996. On the roof is a French Restaurant that oversees the city. The building was originally named after Fred Astaire and Ginger Roberts, The Fred and Ginger building, but was nicknamed the Dancing House because of its form.

The AT&T Building

The AT&T Building, formerly known as the Sony Building, is located on Madison Avenue between 55th and 56th Avenue. It is a 37 story building designed by the same people that designed the Lipstick Building, Philip Johnson and John Burgee. The building was critizized and created a controversy for it's ornament at the top. It was often called the "Chippendale Ornament." This building is a great example of postmodern architecture.

Skyscraper Video

Skyscrapers are not always super tall. It all depends on the place where they are. Architects have always been pasionate about building skyscrapers. Not only will you be known forever, but you'll beat off other architects you're competing with at the time. But building a skyscraper is tough. All of your designs need to be perfect in order for it to work. Your designs need to be perfect.

Louis Kahn

Louis Kahn is a well known architect and artist. His parents emigrated from Russia and moved to Philadelphia. His life and death was a mystery. He had three families at the same time. They never met until the day of his funeral. He died of a heart attack in a bathroom in Pennsylvannia Station in New York. He wasn't identified until three days later because he scratched off his address on his passport. The documentary we watched was made by his son. While he was alive, his work wasn't appreciated, but now that he's dead, people who rejected his work wish that they would've invested more money and time into his work.

Grace Building

The Grace Building is located on 42nd Street and Avenue of the Americas (6th Avenue), right across the street from Bryant Park. It is 630 feet (192meters) tall and was built on 1971. The W. R. Grace Building was designed by Gordon Bunshaft who also designed the Solow Building, which is very similar to the Grace building. It has 50 floors and is made of white tavertine. It is known for it's "scoop" feature. The bottom of the building is bigger than the top so that more air and sun light can get into the city.

The Chrysler Building

The Chrysler Building was designed by William Van Allen and completed on May 27, 1930. It is 1,047 (319 meters) high. It was the tallest building in New York from 1930 to 1931, until the Empire State Building. After the fall of the World Trade Center, it once again became the second tallest building in New York. It is well known for its four eagles.

United Nations Headquarters

The United Nations Headquarters in New York City was completed in 1950, designed by Wallace K. Harrison. It is located on 42nd Street and First Avenue. The front of the 38 floor building is adorned by flags of every country that is part of the United Nations. It is a rectangular building. The east and west walls are made of thermopane glass, and the north and south walls are made of vermont marble. The windows look green. I feel that the building is very plain, and didn't like it very much. If I could, I'd probably change the color to a dark brown so that the green windows stand out more.

About Us

At the New Design High School Credit Recovery Program, we will be studying Skyscrapers. We will go visit different skyscapers, research them and find out about their achitectural style. We'll sketch pictures and take real life photos. A new blog with photos will be posted by the students every day. Stay tuned and you'll find out more about different skyscrapers in New York City.

The Flatiron Building

The Fuller Building, also known as the Flatiron Building, was designed by Chicago's Daniel Burnham and John Wellborn Root, and built in 1902. It is 285feet (87meters) high and has 22 floors. It is currently an office building. The Flatiron Building, designed in the Beaux-Arts style, has Greek columns, is made with limestone and the skeleton is made up of glazed terra-cotta steel.
The building is greyish-beige. It is well known because of it's triangular shape and the fact that from different angles it looks flat. Adorned by lion heads, stripes and faces, the Flatiron building does not need any changes made. My favorite ornament is the arched windows at the top. You can tell that it was inspired by Greek architecture. You can see this building from 23rd Street, Fifth Ave, and Broadway facing Madison Square.

The Metropolitan Insurance Company Tower

The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower, also known as the Metlife Tower is located right across the street from Madison Square Park. It was the tallest building in the world from 1909 to 1913 when the Woolworth tower surpased it. It is 700feet (213meters) high. The design was inspired by the Campanile in Venice, Italy and was designed by Napoleon LeBurun & sons. The base of the tower was created in 1893 but the tower itself was completed in 1909. It has a sandy color and was made from Tuckahoe Marble. During the renovation of the building, plain limestone was used to cover the tower. When I first saw the tower I thought it was beautiful. I loved the colors and the clocks. The clocks are a greenish color and are very elaborate. My favorite feature is the golden turret at the top. It just puts the cherry on top. I love the way that the sun reflects off of it.