From one of our foremost architectural writers: an engaging, brilliant exploration of the life and work of the most famous architect of our time, and one of the few architects ever to be widely admired by both critics and the general public.This first full-fledged critical biography of Frank Gehry presents and evaluates the work of a man whom fifty architects, critics, and historians assembled by Vanity Fair designated the most important architect in the world. It discusses at length his major buildings: from his own house--an exploded Dutch Colonial in Santa Monica--to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, which has almost single-handedly transformed contemporary architecture. It considers the work in light of Gehry's personal life: the influence of hisimmigrant grandparents, his two marriages, his close relationships to an unusual circle of celebrated clients and friends, his longtime therapist. It analyzes his carefully created aw, shucks persona and the intense ambition it masks; examines Gehry's anxieties about fame and how his outsider status as a Los Angeles architect allowed him to experiment in useful ways; and finally discusses how he thinks about and employs technology to change not just the way a building can look but the way architecture itself is practiced- Here, from Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Paul Goldberger, is the first full-fledged critical biography of Frank Gehry, undoubtedly the most famous architect of our time. Goldberger follows Gehry from his humble origins-the son of working-class Jewish immigrants in Toronto-to the heights of his extraordinary career. He explores Gehry's relationship to Los Angeles, a city that welcomed outsider artists and profoundly shaped him in his formative years. He surveys the full range of his work, from the Bilbao Guggenheim to the Walt Disney Concert Hall in L.A. to the architect's own home in Santa Monica, which galvanized his neighbors and astonished the world. He analyzes his carefully crafted persona, in which an amiable surface masks a driving ambition. And he discusses his use of technology, not just to change the way a building looks, but to revolutionize the very practice of the field. Comprehensive and incisive, Building Art is a sweeping view of a singular artist-and an essential story of architecture's modern era.