Analyzing the Architectural Expressions of Post-Minimalism in Frank O. Gehry’s Projects

Abstract

Since postmodernism, instead of a specific idea or style dominating, various architects' diverse languages lead the world's architecture. One of the architects receiving much attention despite such diversity is Frank O. Gehry. The multidisciplinary nature of Gehry's morphological language is manifested from various angles, including the introduction of the digital technology used in aircraft technology to architecture and deriving new forms. This paper explores how late minimalist sculpture's formative characteristics and attributes were projected into Gehry's architecture. Post-minimalism was examined as a methodology, including its thought and constructive properties. His working period was divided into four periods based on Frank Gehry's architectural characteristics and the change in the elements. The result showed that before the birth of post-minimalism, the first period of Gehry's architecture already showed similar properties to post-minimalism, indicating that Gehry's architecture and post-minimalism sculpture were starting from the same line. The second period of Gehry's architecture shared a lot of formative attributes like post-minimalism. It is presumed that this was the period when post-minimalism was born and flourished, and Gehry was directly influenced by it. Later, the post-minimalistic attribute seemed to disappear somewhat in the 3rd period of Gehry's architecture, but it developed into a new aspect in the 4th period. It was proven that Frank Gehry reflects the attributes of post-minimalism that pursued a semi-form and formed his unique formative language by fusing these sculptural attributes with his architectural vocabulary.