ROME, ITALY  - CANADIAN-AMERICAN 'starchitect' Frank Gehry will receive a Golden Lion award for his career at this year's architecture Biennale in Venice, organisers said on Tuesday.

'Frank Gehry has transformed modern architecture,' Biennale director Aaron Betsky said in a statement.

'He has liberated it from the confines of the box' and the constraints of common building practices.'

Mr Gehry, 79, who was awarded the prestigious Pritzker prize for architecture in 1989, created the curvy, titanium-clad Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, considered a prime example of deconstructivism.

The biennial exhibition, to be held from September 14 to November 23, has the theme 'Out There: Architecture Beyond Building' this year.

The idea is to 'point the way towards an architecture liberated from buildings, to engage the central issues of our society,' Mr Betsky said.

The last architecture Biennale in the north-eastern Italian lagoon city focused on the human experience in 16 megacities and awarded a career Golden Lion to US architect Richard Rogers.