“Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness.”

“People ask me if I’m an artist or an architect. But I think they’re the same.”

“A lot of people don’t get it, but I design from the inside out so that the finished product looks inevitable somehow. I think it’s important to create spaces that people like to be in, that are humanistic.”

“Architecture is a small piece of this human equation, but for those of us who practice it, we believe in its potential to make a difference, to enlighten and to enrich the human experience, to penetrate the barriers of misunderstandin g and provide a beautiful context for life’s drama.”

“I think you’ve got to accept that certain things are in process that you can’t change, that you can’t overwhelm. The chaos of our cities, the randomness of our lives, the unpredictability of where you’re going to be in ten years from now – all of those things are weighing on us, and yet there is a certain glimmer of control. If you act a certain way, and talk a certain way, you’re going to draw certain forces to you.”

“Let me tell you one thing. In the world we live in, 98 per cent of what gets built and designed today is pure shit,” responded Gehry after raising his middle finger. “There’s no sense of design nor respect for humanity or anything. They’re bad buildings and that’s it.”

“Every now and then, however, a small number of people do something special. They’re very few. But – my God! – leave us in peace! We dedicate ourselves to our work. I don’t beg for work. I don’t have publicists. I’m not waiting for people to call me. I work with clients who have respect for the art of architecture. At the very least, don’t ask stupid questions like this.”

 “When you build a building, any building, start with the simple block model to see where that goes,” says Gehry in a promotional video for the course.”

“As an artist, I got constraints, gravity is one of them,” he continues. “But within all those constraints I have 15 per cent of freedom to make my art.”

“I’m always trying to express movement, I was fascinated with the fold so basic to our first feelings of love and warmth. These ideas are scary as hell to tell to the client, they can reject you and they will. But create the logic for it as you go, stretch it into another place.”

8 Spruce Street, originally known as Beekman Tower and currently marketed as New York by Gehry, is a 76-story skyscraper designed by architect Frank Gehry in the New York City borough of Manhattan at 8 Spruce Street, between William and Nassau Streets, in Lower Manhattan, just south of City Hall Park and the Brooklyn Bridge.

Building: New York by Gehry

The Beekman Tower 

This is the much-anticipated Frank Gehry-designed Lower Manhattan residential skyscraper, and it is now ready for renters. Located at 8 Spruce Street, just east of City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan, the 76-story rental apartment boasts of walls of stainless-steel panels and bay windows that rippled and curled like a zipper run amok. 

8 Spruce Street, New York, NY, 10038 904 units 76 stories The building stands at 870 feet.