Meeting Johan Dehlin (on Frank Gehry)

In late 2025, Frank Gehry passed away. Ten years earlier, in 2015, Johan Dehlin, an architect and architecture photographer, took off to California on a book project. He wanted to visit and photograph some of the buildings Frank Gehry designed in the 70s and 80s. This period of Gehry's work was all about exploring vernacular design, or as Frank himself described his own architecture: cheapskate. It took Johan another ten years before the book was finally released in June 2025, just months before Frank passed away.

I met with Johan and we talked about him being an architect, about how he became a photographer of buildings, and then we did a deep dive into his book Five Buildings by Frank Gehry. We talked about the specific designs of each building, the struggle to get access to them, and Johan's personal experiences of being inside every one of them.

About your host, Richard Feigin

Architecture caught me in my teens and has never let go. At 15 I bought my first book on the subject and flicked through the pages so many times I knew the buildings by heart. This podcast is a direct result of that deep interest in architecture.