Martin Filler: 

So thorough was [Frank] Gehry’s reorientation of architecture as an art form rather than an adjunct of engineering that it’s hard to recall how the high end of his profession was perceived before him, when technocrats in big architectural firms seemed indistinguishable from any other business executives. In the mid-1970s, as he approached fifty, Gehry resolved to throw over his profitable relationship with one of the most enlightened developers of the day—James Rouse, best known for his humanely planned, racially integrated new town of Columbia, Maryland. There Gehry designed several structures, including the Rouse Company Headquarters of 1969–1974, followed by a number of other Rouse projects on both coasts, including his Pop-inflected Santa Monica Place shopping mall of 1972–1980. He then reinvented himself as an artist who used architecture as his medium, a move as risky as Andy Warhol’s decision a decade earlier to abandon his lucrative practice as a commercial illustrator and take up fine art.