President Obama awarded architect Frank Gehry and others the 2016 Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tuesday.
Gehry, the starchitect behind 8 Spruce Street — known as New York by Gehry — and the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain, was among 21 recipients honored at the White House, CBS reported.
“Frank [Gehry’s] work shows that while buildings may be fixed to the ground, like all great art they can lift our spirits, they can soar,” the president said during the ceremony Tuesday.
Other recipients included Lorne Michaels, Diana Ross, Tom Hanks and Margaret Hamilton, a computer scientist who was instrumental in the NASA’s Apollo project.
Gehry is perhaps best known in the U.S. for his Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. His New York projects include the undulating Spruce Street tower, Issey Miyake’s flagship store in Tribeca and the IAC Building in Chelsea. The latter is currently the subject of a lawsuit, which claims that blobs of sealant are falling from the building. [CBS] — Kathryn Brenzel