Frank Gehry, the Canadian-born renegade architect behind some of the world’s most recognizable buildings, has died at 96.
Meaghan Lloyd, chief of staff at Gehry Partners, LLP, said he died Friday morning at his home in Santa Monica, California, after a brief illness.
Known for his unconventional style and bold designs, Gehry brought unique life to cultural spaces such as the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California.
His unusual work in museums, office spaces and private homes generated the kind of attention rarely experienced by architects, making his structural creations among the most recognizable in the world. He was even immortalized as a cartoon version of himself in an episode of The Simpsons.
Listening to critics critique his signature designs was just part of the job, Gehry said in 2012 while presenting the initial concept for a trio of condo buildings in his hometown of Toronto.
The buildings drew harsh criticism from some Torontonians when the models were unveiled and underwent some redesigns before construction began. A revised plan for the project, which is still under construction, includes two residential high-rises in the city’s entertainment district.
Frank Gehry on the question of mortality
“In Bilbao, Spain, they wanted to shoot me when they saw (the Guggenheim design) and now they make $500 million a year in revenue for the city. I don’t know how to get over (the criticism), that’s just part of it,” he said, noting that the Walt Disney Concert Hall was also mocked as “broken china.”
Grandparents are often credited with the earliest influence
Gehry was born Frank Owen Goldberg on February 28, 1929, to Polish immigrant parents living in Toronto. His childhood had a strong emphasis on family, and his grandparents are often considered the earliest influence on his celebrated career.
His grandmother, Leah, would scatter oddly shaped pieces of wood she bought at a nearby furniture store on her kitchen floor and encouraged young Gehry to use them to build imaginary buildings, bridges, and cities before stuffing them into the family’s wood stove.
“(It was) the most fun I’ve ever had in my life. I realized it was a license to play,” Gehry is quoted in the 2015 biography. Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehryby Paul Goldberger.
As a teenager, Gehry attended Friday lectures at the University of Toronto and became especially fond of one speaker, whom he later concluded was probably the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, another modern designer who thrived by breaking the rules.
Gehry and his family moved to Los Angeles in 1947 and he became a US citizen three years later. His first years in the United States were spent as a truck driver during the day, while he took sculpture classes at night school and later earned a degree in architecture from the University of Southern California.
His career began strongly in Los Angeles
It wasn’t until the mid-1950s that Gehry reluctantly changed his last name at the urging of his first wife. He feared that the name Goldberg would expose his children to anti-Semitism. He later said he regretted doing so.
Those years were filled with professional volatility as she balanced her aspirations on a tight budget and the responsibilities of raising her two children. He served in the US Army while networking within the architecture community on weekends, and studied urban planning at Harvard University before dropping out.
His career started strong: he opened his business in Los Angeles in 1962 and two years later worked at Danziger Studio and Residence, a highly regarded Los Angeles landmark. Most of his early projects adhered to modernist styles, which favor geometric lines and simplicity.
By 1967, Gehry’s reputation in the architecture community was at new heights. He was hired to design the Merriweather Post Pavilion, an amphitheater in Columbia, Maryland. It became his first project to be featured in the New York Times, which called it “an unreserved architectural and acoustic success.”
Gehry focused most of his attention on projects in Southern California during those early years, including his first shopping center, Santa Monica Place (1980), an addition to the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium (1981) in San Pedro, California, and most notably his own private residence, which used plywood planks, metal fencing, and corrugated steel materials in a deconstructivist style (1978).
The designs took shape in cities around the world in the 1990s.
By the 1990s, Gehry’s bold designs were taking shape in cities around the world. The Frederick Weisman Art Museum, his Guggenheim Bilbao, and El Peix, the fish-shaped structure Gehry designed for the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, all displayed their playful, unconventional attitudes.
Awarding him the prestigious Pritzker Prize for Architecture in 1989, art critic and juror Ada Louise Huxtable wrote that Gehry allowed delight to find its way into every structure he designed.
“You can’t think of anything he’s done that doesn’t make us smile,” he wrote.
“These are bright, lively designs and buildings that lift the spirit with revelations of how the seemingly ordinary can be made extraordinary through acts of imagination.”
Gehry’s projects are too many to name, but his other notable works include the redesign of the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, the Gehry Tower in Hanover, Germany, and the Louis Vuitton Foundation for Creation in Paris.
The lasting influence of Gehry’s grandmother inspired him to take a more active role in the next generation of creators. She joined Turnaround Arts, a US program run by the Kennedy Center that aims to improve the academic performance of the country’s lowest-performing schools by increasing engagement in the arts.
Gehry receives the US Presidential Medal of Freedom
Gehry was among the leaders who taught architecture classes to students who he said were often uninspired by academia. She would put physical materials in front of them, like her grandmother once did, and ask them to use their imagination.
“You can get them involved in painting and making things, those tactile things,” he told The Canadian Press in a 2019 interview.
“When they make a small building, or a city… you can say, ‘If you put them together, who runs the city?’ So you can teach civics and all that. So, I think my grandmother’s idea was perfect.”
Gehry received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’ highest civilian honor, in 2016 from former US President Barack Obama.
In his speech, Obama said Gehry inspired others through his advocacy for arts education and philanthropy.
“He decided to change the idea of what architecture could be,” Obama said.
“Frank’s work teaches us that, while buildings may be sturdy and fixed to the ground, like all great art, they can lift our spirits. They can elevate, they can broaden our horizons.”
