Vitra Design Museum, Frank Gehry (1989) in Weil am Rhein

You're standing at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, just across the border from Basel. Take a good look at that white building. It looks like a pile of blocks, curves and slanted walls that someone gave a good shake. That's Frank Gehry's work, and it was his very first building in Europe. He built it with Günter Pfeifer, an architect from nearby Lörrach. Gehry usually mixed all kinds of materials, but here he kept it to white plaster and titanium zinc. And for the first time, he let curved shapes break up his usual sharp angles. Some people see an echo of Le Corbusier's famous chapel at Ronchamp, not far from here in France.