The year 1980 in architecture involved some significant events.

Frank Owen Gehry, CC (born Frank Owen Goldberg; February 28, 1929) is a Canadian American Pritzker Prize-winning architect based in Los Angeles, California.

His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions. His works are cited as being among the most important works of contemporary architecture in the 2010 World Architecture Survey, which led Vanity Fair to label him as "the most important architect of our age".

Gehry's best-known works include the titanium-covered Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; MIT Stata Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles; Experience Music Project in Seattle; Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis; Dancing House in Prague; the Vitra Design Museum and MARTa Museum in Germany; the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto; the Cinémathèque française in Paris; and 8 Spruce Street in New York City. But it was his private residence in Santa Monica, California, which jump-started his career, lifting it from the status of "paper architecture" – a phenomenon that many famous architects have experienced in their formative decades through experimentation almost exclusively on paper before receiving their first major commission in later years. Gehry is also the designer of the future Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial.

Michael Graves (born July 9, 1934) is an American architect. Identified as one of The New York Five, Graves has become a household name with his designs for domestic products sold at Target stores in the United States.

Graves was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. He attended Broad Ripple High School, receiving his diploma in 1952. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Cincinnati where he also became a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity, and a master's degree from Harvard University.

An architect in public practice in Princeton, New Jersey, since 1964, Graves is also the Robert Schirmer Professor of Architecture, Emeritus at Princeton University. He directs the firm Michael Graves & Associates, which has offices in Princeton and in New York City. In addition to his popular line of household items, Graves and his firm have earned critical acclaim for a wide variety of commercial and residential buildings and interior design, although some occupants of the buildings object to the confined views caused by signature features such as small or circular windows and squat columns. Graves was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 1979. In 1999 Graves was awarded the National Medal of Arts, in 2001 the AIA Gold Medal, in 2010 the AIA Topaz Medal, and in 2012 the Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council.

Charles Gwathmey (June 19, 1938 – August 3, 2009) was an American architect. He was a principal at Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects, as well as one of the five architects identified as The New York Five in 1969. One of Gwathmey's most famous designs is the 1992 renovation of Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, he was the son of the American painter Robert Gwathmey and photographer Rosalie Gwathmey. Charles Gwathmey attended the University of Pennsylvania and received his Master of Architecture degree in 1962 from Yale School of Architecture, where he won both The William Wirt Winchester Fellowship as the outstanding graduate and a Fulbright Grant.

Gwathmey served as President of the Board of Trustees for The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies and was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1981.

From 1965 through 1991, Gwathmey taught at Pratt Institute, Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, Princeton University, Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Texas, and the University of California at Los Angeles. He was Davenport Professor (1983 and 1999) and Bishop Professor (1991) at Yale, and the Eliot Noyes Visiting Professor at Harvard University (1985). Gwathmey was the Spring 2005 William A. Bernoudy Resident in Architecture at the American Academy in Rome.

Hugh Hardy is a leading American architect born in Majorca, Spain in 1932. He is best known for his work designing theaters, performing arts venues, public spaces, and cultural facilities across the United States.

The late New Yorker writer Brendan Gill called him “the Stanford White of our fin de siècle”. In 1995, Julie Iovine of the New York Times wrote, “There is scarcely a cultural icon in the city with which Mr. Hardy has not been involved.”

Hardy graduated from Princeton University with a Bachelor of Architecture and with a Master of Fine Arts. After serving with the engineering corps of the United States Navy, he worked as the Architectural Assistant to set designer Jo Mielziner in New York. One of his first projects was to work on the Saarinen-designed Vivian Beaumont Theater, painting a hotel room set for the original production of "Gypsy".

Hardy has founded three firms in his career: Hugh Hardy & Associates in 1962, Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer in 1967, and H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture in 2004. Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer received the American Institute of Architects Architecture Firm Award in 1981, the highest honor bestowed upon a firm for distinguished architecture. Hardy is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects.