FREDERICK FISHER & PARTNERS
12248 SANTA MONICA BOULEVARD
LOS ANGELES, CA 90025-2518
Frederick Fisher
Frederick Fisher was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1949. His mother Carol, taught while taking care of the household and three sons; his father Eugene studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. Eugene worked for several firms in Cleveland, finally as a partner in charge of hospital design at Dalton and Dalton (later Dalton, Little Newport). Frank Lloyd Wright was his model architect, and Wright's books were almost the only architecture texts in the house.
Throughout high school Frederick Fisher held summer jobs at his uncle's construction company. He studied architecture for two years at Miami University of Ohio and transferred to Oberlin College to study art and art history. Reading Robert Venturi's Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture reopened Fisher's eyes to the potential of architecture and its broad connection to artistic concepts. His own art at the time focused on a kind of surrealist collage. While at Oberlin, Fisher helped refurbish a Frank Lloyd Wright house. During an internship in Department of Architecture at the Museum of modern Art, Fisher researched a proposed exhibition on glass architecture. After graduate from Oberlin College in 1971, and while considering the new graduate program at the University of California at Los Angeles, he came across a magazine photo of Los Angeles architect Frank Gehry jumping on a table made of cardboard, and a publication of the Mobile Theater designed by members of the UCLA faculty: Eugene Kupper, Peter de Bretteville, Craig Hodgetts and Robert Mangurian of Studio Works.
Fisher drove from Cincinnati to Los Angeles in the summer of 1971 and entered the UCLA Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning. Frank Gehry's 1975 lecture at UCLA connected architecture to abstract art for Fisher in a profound and distinct way. Fisher worked in Gehry's office from 1978 through 1980 on such projects as Mid-Atlantic Toyota, the De Menil townhouse, Santa Monica Place, the Cabrillo Marine Museum, and Arts Park (a collaboration between Gehry and Lawrence Halprin). Gehry's Cloverfield office was full of the work of California artists Robert Irwin, Tony Berlant, Laddie Dill, Ed Mosses, Billy Al Bengston, Alexis Smith, and others. Gehry brought artists such as Michael Heizer and Elyn Zimmerman into the office for informal talks to the staff and friends.
Near the end of Fisher's time in Gehry's office, Thane Roberts, a classmate from UCLA, passed on a residential job; the Caplin House was Fisher's first solo building. The two later worked together as Fisher/Roberts Company for two years before establishing independent practices.
In addition to teaching at UCLA, SCI-ARC, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of North Carolina, and Harvard University, Fisher chaired the Environmental Design Department at Otis/Parsons in Los Angeles from 1986 to 1992.
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