The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles has acquired an archive of work by architect Frank Gehry that spans his first 30 years in practice.
Announced yesterday, the part purchase, part gift includes a comprehensive overview of projects from the start of the 88-year-old Canadian-American architect's career.
"Frank Gehry is undoubtedly the world's most famous living architect," said Getty Research Institute director Thomas W Gaehtgens.
"This extensive archive, covering the first three decades of his illustrious career, offers an in-depth look at the genesis of Gehry's distinctive style and includes many of the projects for which he is internationally known."
The Gehry Archive comprises approximately 1,000 sketches, more than 120,000 working drawings and over 100,000 slides. The Gehry Archive includes approximately 1,000 sketches created by the architect during the first three decades of his career
Hundreds of boxes of office records, personal papers, and correspondence, 168 working models, and 112 presentation models are also included.
The material encompasses the period from Gehry's early graduate studies to the 1988 competition entry for the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Downtown LA, the year before he won the prestigious Pritzker Prize for architecture.
The collection also contains digital files, which represent the architect's development of the software platforms needed for him to be able to plan the construction of his complicated buildings.

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