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Some cultures tried to stop people from expressing themselves. In Mao's China, for example, the Communists tried to stop individual expression. For them the payoff was a society of equality. The problem of course is that it didn't work.

Frank Gehry

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Frank Gehry
Age: 95
Born: 1929
Born: February 28
Architect
Designer
Furniture Designer
Sculptor
City of Toronto
Frank Owen Gehry
Frank O. Gehry
Ephraim Owen Goldberg
Frank Goldberg
Frank Owen Goldberg
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Communist
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Equality
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Childhood play is nothing more than an expression of our individuality and preparation for human interaction. Everybody’s an artist. Unfortunately we don’t treat them as such.
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I'm going to design the container and interior spaces. You bring your own stuff to it and make it your own.
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I don't know how to overcome this perception that I'm extravagant.
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Your best work is your expression of yourself. Now, you may not be the greatest at it, but when you do it, you're the only expert.
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You can look anywhere and find inspiration.
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If you know where it's going, it's not worth doing.
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That's what you have to find in architecture. You have to find your signature. When you find it, you're the only expert on it. People can say they like it or don't like it. They can argue about it, but it's yours.
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People are searching for something they don't have in their lives. There's an unfulfilled need.
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Democracy is a problem and we don't want to get rid of it.
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Here we are surrounded by material that's being manufactured in unimaginable quantities worldwide and is used everywhere. I don't like it, no one likes it, and yet it's pervasive. We don't even see it.
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One of my unsung heroes is Erich Mendelsohn. I met him when I was a student and he was a cranky old man and very unpleasant. But if you go to his Einstein Tower in Potsdam, Germany you see an enormous intellect at work with a language that was personal and new. It has a sense of urban design and of theater and procession I hadn't seen before.
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The present is filled with flotsam and irony and chaos and disorder in all arenas, political and sociological. I think we have to work in the present even if it's awkward, even if it's not necessarily good, even if we don't understand it ourselves. You only find out 10, maybe 20 years later what was going on.
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