GEHRY-RIGGED.

Frank Gehry may be the most famous architect at work today, but, like so many of his peers, he has found it nearly impossible to build in New York. Twenty years ago, he designed a tower for the site of Madison Square Garden which never got built, and in recent years a number of projects--a redesign of One Times Square, a downtown branch of the Guggenheim, a hotel for Ian Schrager--have all foundered. Now, at the age of seventy-seven, Gehry has completed his first freestanding New York building, a headquarters for Barry Diller's InterActiveCorp, in Chelsea. It is only ten stories tall, but you can't drive down the West Side Highway without seeing it--a white glass palazzo that looks less like a building than like a computer-generated image of one. On a cloudy day, it appears to fade into the mist. Gehry has likened the billowing forms of the facade to sails, and from a distance it seems to be made of some kind of plastic or fibreglass. All-glass buildings often feel stiff, but in Gehry's hands even glass is relaxed.

No Gehry building is ordered in a traditional way, but this one comes closer than most. There is a broad, nearly symmetrical five-story base, with a facade that zigzags in and out, making five roughly equal sections. On top of this is a narrower five-story tower of Gehry's swooping, rhythmic shapes. The facade, unusually for Gehry, is made of a single material: instead of a jumble of clashing forms, the glass is all you see, covering everything like a blanket. By Gehry's standards, this is serene, but behind the placid exterior are some daring technical maneuvers, including a number of concrete structural columns set at angles. During construction, the Georgetown Company, Diller's partner in the development, got calls from people who wondered if it knew that the building was going up crooked.

There are more than fifteen hundred panels of glass in the InterActiveCorp building, and almost every one is unique; they curve to fit the shape of the facade, gently concave one moment, convex the next. The white color is provided by ceramic dots, known as frits, bonded to the glass. Fritting is a common way of reducing glare in glass buildings, but Gehry has exploited its potential for drama. Each panel is densely fritted at the top and bottom but nearly clear at eye level. Viewed from the outside, the building exhibits dark, hazy horizontal stripes, as if the glass had been spray-painted. At night, when the offices are lit, the pattern will reverse, and the clear glass sections will appear lighter. "The whole building will glow like a lantern," Gehry told me.

The description is characteristic of Gehry, who, for all his experimentation, is always more interested in emotional impact than in architectural dogma. This helps explain the scale of his current celebrity. Last year, he made a guest appearance on "The Simpsons," and this year saw the release of a worshipful documentary, "Sketches of Frank Gehry," by the director Sydney Pollack. In the "Simpsons" episode, Gehry designs a satirically Gehryesque concert hall that ends up being converted into a prison, and there are moments when it seems that Frank Gehry's fame could be its own kind of prison, that his style will become mere shtick. Certainly Gehry is not good at saying no. He has designed watches for Fossil--his signature prominently displayed on the watch faces--and earlier this year Tiffany launched a line of his jewelry. (It features many of the twisting shapes familiar from his architecture, but what is revolutionary in a building is merely pleasant in a necklace.) The angst-filled artist we see in Pollack's movie is unlikely to round out his days as a brand franchise, but he clearly needs commissions that spur new discoveries rather than clients who just want his name on their projects.

Barry Diller is an ideal client for Gehry. He and his development partner Marshall Rose encouraged experiment, but Diller also has a company to run. Gehry has crafted interiors that balance architectural expression and practical concerns. Most of its offices will bear some hint of Gehry's ...