Frank Gehry Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement
of the 11th International Architecture Exhibition /
Wim Wenders President of the Jury
for the 65th International Film Festival/
The 2007 accounts approved
Venice, 27 June 2008 - The Board of the Foundation La Biennale di Venezia, chaired by Paolo Baratta, gathered today in the offices of Palazzo Querini Dubois, and on the proposal of the Director, Aaron Betsky, attributed the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement for the 11th International Architecture Exhibition to Frank Gehry. With this award, the desire is to stress – in line with the spirit of the 11th Architecture Biennale – how much Gehry’s work is the significant result of years of experimentation. “Frank Gehry has transformed modern architecture”; writes Aaron Betsky in his motivation. “He has liberated it from the confines of the ‘box’ and the constraints of common building practices. As experimental as the art practices that have been his inspiration, Frank Gehry’s architecture is the very modern model for an architecture beyond building”.
The Board has also underlined the important presence Gehry will have in Venice with his Venice Gateway, the water gate linking the city to the airport.
The Board also approved the assigning of a special Golden Lion for lifetime achievement to a historian of Architecture – on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the birth of Andrea Palladio – to the American James S. Ackermann, the doyen of historians of Renaissance architecture and one of the scholars who created the modern history of architecture, as well as the author of two of the most important monographs dedicated to Michelangelo and Andrea Palladio.
The Board of directors also took note of the progress in the preparation of the 11th International Architecture Exhibition, Out There: Architecture Beyond Building, directed by Aaron Betsky, and approved the definition of the official awards, which are as follows: a Golden Lion for Best National Participation; a Golden Lion for the Best Project in the Out There: Architecture Beyond Building International Exhibition; a Silver Lion for a Promising Young Architect in the Out There: Architecture Beyond Building International Exhibition.
These prizes have been attributed by the International Jury which – on the proposal of the Director, Aaron Betsky – is formed as follows: Paola Antonelli (Italy), curator of the department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York; Max Hollein (Austria), director of the Städelsches Kunstinstitut and of the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt; Jeffrey Kipnis (USA), critic and lecturer at the University of Ohio; Farshid Moussavi (Iran), founder of Foreign Office Architecture in London and lecturer at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design; Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi (Italy), critic, historian and lecturer, specialising in urban planning, and teacher in the History of contemporary architecture at the Università di Roma La Sapienza. The President of the Jury will be nominated by its members during their first meeting.
Following a proposal from the Director, Marco Mueller, the Board also nominated the German film director, Wim Wenders, as President of the International Jury for the competition in the 65th International Film Festival. Wenders has built up a close relationship with the Festival over the years. A protagonist at the Lido already in 1972 with his first long feature film, The Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty (Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter), he won the Golden Lion 10 years later with The state of things (Der Stand del Dinge), the first in a series of important awards that have led him to the forefront of the international scene.
Finally, the Board of directors approved the accounts for the 2007 accounting period. The accounts closed with a positive result of euro 340,691, assisted by such extraordinary items as the contingent assets for euro 397,418 resulting from a confirmed tax credit, and a contribution of euro 500,000 approved by the Ministry for Cultural Assets and Activities on 18th December 2007. Moreover, the expected contribution from Arcus for 2007, the procedures of attribution for which are still under way, has been included amongst the earnings.
of the 11th International Architecture Exhibition /
Wim Wenders President of the Jury
for the 65th International Film Festival/
The 2007 accounts approved
Venice, 27 June 2008 - The Board of the Foundation La Biennale di Venezia, chaired by Paolo Baratta, gathered today in the offices of Palazzo Querini Dubois, and on the proposal of the Director, Aaron Betsky, attributed the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement for the 11th International Architecture Exhibition to Frank Gehry. With this award, the desire is to stress – in line with the spirit of the 11th Architecture Biennale – how much Gehry’s work is the significant result of years of experimentation. “Frank Gehry has transformed modern architecture”; writes Aaron Betsky in his motivation. “He has liberated it from the confines of the ‘box’ and the constraints of common building practices. As experimental as the art practices that have been his inspiration, Frank Gehry’s architecture is the very modern model for an architecture beyond building”.
The Board has also underlined the important presence Gehry will have in Venice with his Venice Gateway, the water gate linking the city to the airport.
The Board also approved the assigning of a special Golden Lion for lifetime achievement to a historian of Architecture – on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the birth of Andrea Palladio – to the American James S. Ackermann, the doyen of historians of Renaissance architecture and one of the scholars who created the modern history of architecture, as well as the author of two of the most important monographs dedicated to Michelangelo and Andrea Palladio.
The Board of directors also took note of the progress in the preparation of the 11th International Architecture Exhibition, Out There: Architecture Beyond Building, directed by Aaron Betsky, and approved the definition of the official awards, which are as follows: a Golden Lion for Best National Participation; a Golden Lion for the Best Project in the Out There: Architecture Beyond Building International Exhibition; a Silver Lion for a Promising Young Architect in the Out There: Architecture Beyond Building International Exhibition.
These prizes have been attributed by the International Jury which – on the proposal of the Director, Aaron Betsky – is formed as follows: Paola Antonelli (Italy), curator of the department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York; Max Hollein (Austria), director of the Städelsches Kunstinstitut and of the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt; Jeffrey Kipnis (USA), critic and lecturer at the University of Ohio; Farshid Moussavi (Iran), founder of Foreign Office Architecture in London and lecturer at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design; Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi (Italy), critic, historian and lecturer, specialising in urban planning, and teacher in the History of contemporary architecture at the Università di Roma La Sapienza. The President of the Jury will be nominated by its members during their first meeting.
Following a proposal from the Director, Marco Mueller, the Board also nominated the German film director, Wim Wenders, as President of the International Jury for the competition in the 65th International Film Festival. Wenders has built up a close relationship with the Festival over the years. A protagonist at the Lido already in 1972 with his first long feature film, The Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty (Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter), he won the Golden Lion 10 years later with The state of things (Der Stand del Dinge), the first in a series of important awards that have led him to the forefront of the international scene.
Finally, the Board of directors approved the accounts for the 2007 accounting period. The accounts closed with a positive result of euro 340,691, assisted by such extraordinary items as the contingent assets for euro 397,418 resulting from a confirmed tax credit, and a contribution of euro 500,000 approved by the Ministry for Cultural Assets and Activities on 18th December 2007. Moreover, the expected contribution from Arcus for 2007, the procedures of attribution for which are still under way, has been included amongst the earnings.
Frank Gehry, Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement
of the 11th International Architecture Exhibition
Case Statement by Aaron Betsky
No other living architect has shown us more clearly how beautiful and productive experimentation can be than Frank Owen Gehry. Now in his fifth decade of practice, Gehry is one of the most famous architects in the world because of his exuberant designs for such structures as the Bilbao Guggenheim (1998) and the Walt Disney Concert Hall (2005). What not everybody who admires his sinuous forms and light-filled embrace of space may realize is that the basis for these forms is not pure intuition, but years of experimentation.
After building up a successful practice in Los Angeles in the 1960s, Gehry abandoned the pursuit of ever-large commissions for the design of small-scale structures in which he sought to pare architecture down to its most elemental shapes. He then destabilized the relationship between them and set them free as compositions. He went even further in the design of his own house in Santa Monica, California (1978), in which he undressed the building down to its bare construction materials and incorporated fragments of existing structures, an asphalt driveway and chain link fencing into the (un)finished construction.
Having stripped architecture down to its building blocks, Gehry then built it up again into a free-form village of forms he composed as dancing blocks and thrusting shapes. His breakthrough into the shapes that made him famous came as a result not of one commission, but of his reversion to extra-architectural elements he mined from art or, in the case of the fish that became his formal mantra, from his own memories.
Frank Gehry was also among the first major architects to adapt computer-aided design. To him, this was not just a way of creating buildings with greater efficiency, but of liberating the architect from what he sees as his or her dependent position into one in which anything the architect can imagine she or he can build.
Frank Gehry has transformed modern architecture. He has liberated it from the confines of the box and the constraints of common building practices. He has shown that the technical solutions architecture offers mean nothing unless they are put to use for the production of a cultural artifacts that liberate us into a new understanding of our world. Slippery as his fish, as open as his undressed buildings, and as experimental as the art practices that have been his inspiration, Frank Gehry’s architecture is the very modern model for an architecture beyond building.
of the 11th International Architecture Exhibition
Case Statement by Aaron Betsky
No other living architect has shown us more clearly how beautiful and productive experimentation can be than Frank Owen Gehry. Now in his fifth decade of practice, Gehry is one of the most famous architects in the world because of his exuberant designs for such structures as the Bilbao Guggenheim (1998) and the Walt Disney Concert Hall (2005). What not everybody who admires his sinuous forms and light-filled embrace of space may realize is that the basis for these forms is not pure intuition, but years of experimentation.
After building up a successful practice in Los Angeles in the 1960s, Gehry abandoned the pursuit of ever-large commissions for the design of small-scale structures in which he sought to pare architecture down to its most elemental shapes. He then destabilized the relationship between them and set them free as compositions. He went even further in the design of his own house in Santa Monica, California (1978), in which he undressed the building down to its bare construction materials and incorporated fragments of existing structures, an asphalt driveway and chain link fencing into the (un)finished construction.
Having stripped architecture down to its building blocks, Gehry then built it up again into a free-form village of forms he composed as dancing blocks and thrusting shapes. His breakthrough into the shapes that made him famous came as a result not of one commission, but of his reversion to extra-architectural elements he mined from art or, in the case of the fish that became his formal mantra, from his own memories.
Frank Gehry was also among the first major architects to adapt computer-aided design. To him, this was not just a way of creating buildings with greater efficiency, but of liberating the architect from what he sees as his or her dependent position into one in which anything the architect can imagine she or he can build.
Frank Gehry has transformed modern architecture. He has liberated it from the confines of the box and the constraints of common building practices. He has shown that the technical solutions architecture offers mean nothing unless they are put to use for the production of a cultural artifacts that liberate us into a new understanding of our world. Slippery as his fish, as open as his undressed buildings, and as experimental as the art practices that have been his inspiration, Frank Gehry’s architecture is the very modern model for an architecture beyond building.
The Jury of the 11th International Architecture Exhibition
Biographical notes
Paola Antonelli
Born in Sassari, she graduated from the Politecnico di Milano. She is curator for the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. She has curated exhibitions not only at the MoMA, but also in Italy, France and Japan. Winner in 2006 of the National Designs Awards contest, she is one of the world’s leading experts in design.
Max Hollein
Born in Vienna (Austria) in 1969, he studied at the city’s university. He has worked for years at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, collaborating with Thomas Krens. He has been curator for the United States Pavilion at the 7th Architecture Exhibition in 2000 and the Austrian Pavilion for the 51st Art Exhibition of the Biennale di Venezia in 2005. He is currently director of the Städelsches Kunstinstitut and of the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt.
Jeffrey Kipnis
Born in 1951 in Georgia (USA), he graduated in Physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is a critic and Professor at the University of Ohio. He has been curator of exhibitions in United States and has written numerous publications and monographs. In 2006, he was awarded an Honorary Diploma from the Architectural Association of London.
Farshid Moussavi
Born in 1965 in Shiraz (Iran), she has worked with Renzo Piano and at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture of Rotterdam. She is a professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and has in the past taught in other schools of architecture. Her Foreign Office Architecture (FOA) in London is considered one of the most creative and innovative firms at an international level.
Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi
Born in 1956 in Catania. A graduate in Architecture, he has specialised in urban planning and teaches History of contemporary architecture at the Università di Roma La Sapienza. He has written numerous articles and essays for leading daily newspapers and specialised periodicals.
Biographical notes
Paola Antonelli
Born in Sassari, she graduated from the Politecnico di Milano. She is curator for the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. She has curated exhibitions not only at the MoMA, but also in Italy, France and Japan. Winner in 2006 of the National Designs Awards contest, she is one of the world’s leading experts in design.
Max Hollein
Born in Vienna (Austria) in 1969, he studied at the city’s university. He has worked for years at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, collaborating with Thomas Krens. He has been curator for the United States Pavilion at the 7th Architecture Exhibition in 2000 and the Austrian Pavilion for the 51st Art Exhibition of the Biennale di Venezia in 2005. He is currently director of the Städelsches Kunstinstitut and of the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt.
Jeffrey Kipnis
Born in 1951 in Georgia (USA), he graduated in Physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is a critic and Professor at the University of Ohio. He has been curator of exhibitions in United States and has written numerous publications and monographs. In 2006, he was awarded an Honorary Diploma from the Architectural Association of London.
Farshid Moussavi
Born in 1965 in Shiraz (Iran), she has worked with Renzo Piano and at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture of Rotterdam. She is a professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and has in the past taught in other schools of architecture. Her Foreign Office Architecture (FOA) in London is considered one of the most creative and innovative firms at an international level.
Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi
Born in 1956 in Catania. A graduate in Architecture, he has specialised in urban planning and teaches History of contemporary architecture at the Università di Roma La Sapienza. He has written numerous articles and essays for leading daily newspapers and specialised periodicals.
Frank Gehry
Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement
11th International Architecture Exhibition
La Biennale di Venezia
Leone d’oro alla carriera
11. Mostra Internazionale di Architettura
La Biennale di Venezia
Photo: Peter Eric Arnell
Courtesy: Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia
Frank Gehry
Biographical notes
Mr. Gehry received his Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Southern California in 1954, and he studied City Planning at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. In subsequent years, Mr. Gehry has built an architectural career that has spanned four decades and produced public and private buildings in America, Europe and Asia. His work has earned Mr. Gehry several of the most significant awards in the architectural field, including the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize in Architecture, the Pritzker Prize, the Wolf Prize in Art (Architecture), the Praemium Imperiale Award, the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Award, the National Medal of Arts, the Friedrich Kiesler Prize, the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal, and the Royal Institute of British Architects Gold Medal. Significant projects include: the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Bilbao, Spain; the DZ Bank Building in Berlin, Germany; Der Neue Zollhof, an office complex in Düsseldorf, Germany; the Nationale-Nederlanden Building in Prague, Czech Republic; the Jay Pritzker Pavilion and BP Bridge in Millennium Park in Chicago, Illinois; the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California; the IAC Building in New York, New York; the Hotel Marqués de Riscal in Elciago, Spain.
James S. Ackerman, Special Golden Lion to an historian of Architecture
James Sloss Ackerman the doyen of the international community of historians of Renaissance architecture. He is one of the scholars to have created the modern history of architecture, founded on a systematic approach and making use of a critical examination of all written and visual sources. It is capacity to use erudition, a sharp sense of observation combined with the sensibility for architecture and an innate facility to bring back to life the great architects of the past with immediacy, almost making them our contemporaries and constantly present in our culture, is perhaps the greatest of Ackerman’s achievements. His work has had a considerable influence on both historians of architecture and architects themselves. In his field, he has written two of the most important monographs of the century that has just closed, dedicated to Michelangelo and Andrea Palladio.
Ackerman was born in San Francisco 1919 and first studied the history of art and architecture at Yale and then New York University under Henri Focillon, Erwin Panofsky and Richard Krautheimer. He discovered Italian art while moving north up the peninsula with the US army in the Second World War. Fascinated by Italy, he chose it as his field of study and obtained a scholarship from the American Academy in Rome. In a series of influential and cultured articles, many of which republished in 1991 in Distance Points: Essays in Theory and Renaissance Art and Architecture, Ackerman opened new horizons regarding the way of considering the Italian Renaissance. Much of Ackerman’s work has been dedicated to Michelangelo, culminating in the excellent monograph, The Architecture of Michelangelo, which was published in English in 1961 and subsequently also in Italian, Spanish, French, Japanese and German. After having written about Michelangelo, Ackerman turned his attention to Palladio, investigating him both as architect and is intellectual in his brilliant book, Palladio, published in 1966, which is still considered the best introduction to this historic figure. The influence of this book has been immense, especially thanks to its innovative approach towards patronage. James Ackerman is a scholar of great originality and productivity, a skilled writer of architecture and a lecturer who has guided many eminent scholars in their first steps. He is a member of the British Academy, of the Royal Academy of Arts, of the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura in Vicenza, of the Ateneo Veneto end of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome. He has received an honorary degree from the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia and he is also a Grande Ufficiale dell'Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana.
In 2003, he was awarded the Balzan Prize in the field of the history of architecture and gave half of the prize money to help young architectural historians, financing the publication of their first work via the annual James Ackerman Prize for the history of architecture (now at its fourth edition), and instituting a scholarship at the American Academy in Rome for young foreign students wishing to undertake paleographic studies in Italian archives.
James Sloss Ackerman the doyen of the international community of historians of Renaissance architecture. He is one of the scholars to have created the modern history of architecture, founded on a systematic approach and making use of a critical examination of all written and visual sources. It is capacity to use erudition, a sharp sense of observation combined with the sensibility for architecture and an innate facility to bring back to life the great architects of the past with immediacy, almost making them our contemporaries and constantly present in our culture, is perhaps the greatest of Ackerman’s achievements. His work has had a considerable influence on both historians of architecture and architects themselves. In his field, he has written two of the most important monographs of the century that has just closed, dedicated to Michelangelo and Andrea Palladio.
Ackerman was born in San Francisco 1919 and first studied the history of art and architecture at Yale and then New York University under Henri Focillon, Erwin Panofsky and Richard Krautheimer. He discovered Italian art while moving north up the peninsula with the US army in the Second World War. Fascinated by Italy, he chose it as his field of study and obtained a scholarship from the American Academy in Rome. In a series of influential and cultured articles, many of which republished in 1991 in Distance Points: Essays in Theory and Renaissance Art and Architecture, Ackerman opened new horizons regarding the way of considering the Italian Renaissance. Much of Ackerman’s work has been dedicated to Michelangelo, culminating in the excellent monograph, The Architecture of Michelangelo, which was published in English in 1961 and subsequently also in Italian, Spanish, French, Japanese and German. After having written about Michelangelo, Ackerman turned his attention to Palladio, investigating him both as architect and is intellectual in his brilliant book, Palladio, published in 1966, which is still considered the best introduction to this historic figure. The influence of this book has been immense, especially thanks to its innovative approach towards patronage. James Ackerman is a scholar of great originality and productivity, a skilled writer of architecture and a lecturer who has guided many eminent scholars in their first steps. He is a member of the British Academy, of the Royal Academy of Arts, of the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura in Vicenza, of the Ateneo Veneto end of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome. He has received an honorary degree from the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia and he is also a Grande Ufficiale dell'Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana.
In 2003, he was awarded the Balzan Prize in the field of the history of architecture and gave half of the prize money to help young architectural historians, financing the publication of their first work via the annual James Ackerman Prize for the history of architecture (now at its fourth edition), and instituting a scholarship at the American Academy in Rome for young foreign students wishing to undertake paleographic studies in Italian archives.
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