After Bilbao: Frank O. Gehry since 1997, at the Vitra Design Museum

Organised and produced by La Triennale di Milano and conceived by Italian curator Germano Celant, Frank O. Gehry since 1997, currently on show at the Vitra Design Museum (until 13 March) surveys the work of one of the world's most distinctive architects.

The story of Frank Gehry's relationship with the Vitra Campus in fact goes back to the mid-1980s (the show takes as its starting point the year the Guggenheim Bilbao opened, marking a turing point in Gehry's oeuvre), when the Canadian-born architect was first approached about building a museum to document the company's history by the then CEO Rolf Fehlbaum. Completed in 1989, the Vitra commission represented Gehry's first European building.

Among the projects on show are the Guggenheim Museums in Bilbao and Abu Dhabi, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Neue Zollhof in Dusseldorf, the Ray and Maria Stata Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago, the DZ Bank building in Berlin, the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, the AGO Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto and finally the IAC and recently completed Beekman Street Housing skyscraper in Manhattan, New York. Disappointingly, due to the time limitations of the exhibition, Frank Gehry's private residence in in Santa Monica, California – the building that originally made his name in the world of architecture - is not on display. 

The show's main strength lies in the insight into Gehry's design process, as buildings evolve from early, conceptual phases right through the construction process to the finish product we see. The projects are displayed in the form of large, detailed studies and competition models from the Gehry Partners' archive and visitors are offered the chance to study never before seen original drawings and developmental models. The latter in particular, which could be considered works of art in themselves, gives visitors an idea of how the architect works in the time leading up to the construction phase. This is illustrated particularly well with a series of miniature Beekman towers, the real vision of which has only just been completed in New York.

Andrea Klettner is a freelance journalist and the editor of Love London Council Housing