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Issue link: https://digital.miamilivingmagazine.com/i/1482381
You are Canadian? Yes. I am American as well. Since 1962 you built your life in Santa Monica, a coastal city in Los Angeles, and have always worked in California since then. Has California been an inspiration to you? It was what it was. It’s all I had. We were very poor and didn’t have much choice. From the age of 17 I worked as truck driver. I got accepted at USC, quite accidentally in architecture, and I did really well. Before that I had no passion to be an architect. I liked the idea of the lectures of Albert Nyberg the Finnish architect. It was serendipitous – meant to be. Was it after school that you were influenced by psychoanalysis and sculpture and art and artists? Psychoanalysis came much later. I graduated USC in architecture. I was interested in art as well and the architecture school shared the building with the art school. During my 4 or 5 years I was always trying to get the architecture and art departments to work together. I was not very successful, even though they were in the same building. There wasn’t much interaction. During the early period through my sister I met some folksingers from South Africa and their daughter was in the art department at UCLA. So we made a connection with the art teachers at UCLA. We did spend time together and did some projects with them. Frank Gehry, later, after many adventures in Europe and Paris…. No. While I was in school I started to work part time for Victor Gruen. When I graduated I got drafted into the US Army. I was in 4 years training at ROTC (The Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps) and they let me graduate without a commission into the Air Force. I wanted to fly. I had a cousin with a biplane and we used to do aerobatics. I was thrown out – I should have sued them but I didn’t – as soon as that was notified the draft board called me in for a fitness test to see if I was fit for duty in the army. I had a bad leg but the doctors said I could do something so I was drafted in and went on 20 mile hikes and my leg acted up and I was not sent to the infantry. I was sent to clerk typist school. Not very exciting. I was sent to the 3rd Infantry Division. Were you in the war? No. The Korean War was coming to an end. They sent me to an engineering company as a clerk typist in Fort Benning, Georgia. The Captain came in and said what else can you do? I said I was an architect. Can you make signs? I said yes. So they gave me a job to do basic signs for the men’s rooms and offices. I made them in a week and he said you have 3 months of sign making so do them over. So I kept making them. My leg was acting up so I went to the infirmary to have treatments. The doctor that gave me the treatments was three month from leaving the army and was going to Alabama to open a clinic. He asked me to draw up the plans for his clinic. The infantry division was going on manoeuvres in Louisiana and the Commanding Officer was a One Star General, a probably gay tight-assed guy, very authoritarian and pushy -. He called me in and said “Private Gehry, I am very proud of you for not complaining over your leg. The doctor says you should not go on manoeuvres and since you have not been complaining you can go to Atlanta and make day rooms. They transferred me to Atlanta. I got out of the army 3 months early to go to school. I went to Harvard to study city planning. It was not for me so they gave me a card so I could go to any lectures. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I met great politicians and scientists like Oppenheimer, the creator of the nuclear bomb. I left Harvard without a degree and went back to LA. From LA we went to France after a couple of years with my ex-wife and two little girls. I met a friend from Harvard, Mark Biass, and I had to work