There's many reasons why he isn't considered a good architect: - Notoriously bad detailing (see the lawsuit associated with the Ray and Maria Stata Center at M

There's many reasons why he isn't considered a good architect: - Notoriously bad detailing (see the lawsuit associated with the Ray and Maria Stata Center at MIT). Precise detailing is a reflection of an architect's craftmanship, and something a lot of architects take a lot of pride in. - No theoretical or functional underpinning to his work, it's literally just a large sculpture. Architects who do incorporate sculptural form (Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Alvaro Alto, Oscar Niemeyer, Preston Scott Cohen etc) are a lot more rigorous about how and why they deploy this strategy. - A related criticism: little to no translation of his sculptural forms to the interior. If you cut a section through his building you'll see that the building contains a lot of empty, useless space at the corners, and then a lot of typical boxy rooms inside. Again look at someone like Koolhaas, Cohen or Zaha to see how efficiently and effectively they integrate their geometric experimentation. - The most impressive part of his projects: the structural calculations, construction and implementation of his work was achieved by others at Gehry Technologies, a technology spin-off that he's basically outsourced all the difficult/interesting parts of his project to. If you look at architects who do structurally experimental work (Santiago Calatrava, Antoni Gaudi), they're actually integrating their analytical work with the design. Gehry himself has said he's more of an artist then an architect. I will say though, that one of my favorite architects (Rafael Moneo) once wrote a pretty good defense of Gehry's work in his book 'Theoretical Anxiety and Design Strategies in the Work of Eight Contemporary Architects', albeit focusing mainly on his use of material. ETA: Oh god. Reading the hacker news crowd confidently opine about architecture is excruciating. There just seems to be a huge gap between what people think architects do, and what the discipline actually does.