Frank Gehry, architect whose eccentric exteriors earned acclaim, dies at 96
The postmodernist was hailed for designs of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.
Frank Gehry, a pioneer of contemporary architecture whose fantastical sculpturelike structures are destinations as much as the museums, libraries and concert halls they encompass, has died at age 96.
Gehry died Friday morning at his home in Santa Monica after a brief respiratory illness, said Meaghan Lloyd, the chief of staff at Gehry Partners.
With works including the titanium-clad Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain and the shining stainless-steel Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Gehry was one of the most feted designers of the 20th century, with buildings unorthodox in materials, shape and function.
Born to a poor Polish-Jewish family in Toronto on Feb. 28, 1929, Frank Goldberg showed an aptitude from an early age for what would become his life’s craft. His grandmother brought him scraps of wood from his grandfather’s hardware store, and the two spent hours designing buildings and bridges for imaginary cities on the living-room floor.
In 1947 the family moved to Los Angeles, where he took night art classes — veering into perspective drawing and ceramics before landing on architecture — and eventually graduated from the University of Southern California’s School of Architecture. He adopted the new surname Gehry in an effort to avoid the antisemitism of postwar Los Angeles and fit into the city’s WASPy architecture scene.
Following a stint in the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, Gehry moved to Massachusetts in 1956 to study urban planning on the GI Bill at the Harvard Graduate School of Design but dropped out. He returned to California, where he started his own firm in Los Angeles in 1962 and launched his “Easy Edges” furniture line, crafted from corrugated cardboard.
With the money from the furniture business he remodelled a home in Santa Monica for his family, incorporating unconventional materials like chain-link fencing, corrugated steel and tilted glass cubes into the existing Dutch colonial. The avant-garde 1978 remodel — which soon became a sort of LA art pilgrimage stop — helped Gehry make his name in architecture circles. Two years later, he let go most of the employees from his business — which had focused largely on somewhat generic commercial projects like shopping malls and office buildings — and began pursuing creative residential work and, soon, the Aerospace Museum of California in North Highlands.
Though at times he rejected the label, Gehry was widely considered one of the faces of deconstructivism, a postmodern architecture movement that burgeoned in the 1980s, characterised by fragmentation and an absence of the symmetry, continuity and harmony of modernism. In his most striking signature works, form doesn’t follow function; the eccentric exteriors reveal little about what lies within.
Some critics have said his work isn’t resourceful, didn’t consider contextual concerns — especially in limited and valuable urban spaces — and was too costly and flashy.
But despite his outlandish and ambitious designs, Gehry took pride in strict adherence to budgets.
He also rejected another term attached to his career — “starchitect” — meant to delineate standouts like Jean Nouvel and the late Zaha Hadid, whose celebrity made them idols among not only architects but also the general public.
Gehry delivered his breakthrough in the public eye in 1997, when he was 68, with the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, widely regarded by architects as the most significant building of the late 20th century. Gehry, who often spoke irreverently, described a sinking feeling after the project was complete, in an interview with WSJ. Magazine.
“I came over the hill in a cab, and I thought: What the f — have I done to these poor people?” he said, admitting it took time for him to get used to his own buildings. “Where’d I get that from? It’s like a magic trick.” The Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2003 cemented his reputation. Los Angeles officials, who had regarded the project as unbuildable and Gehry as a risky bet, shelved his design in the early 1990s and revived it only after the success of the Guggenheim Bilbao.
In 1989, Gehry was awarded the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize, with the jury calling his buildings “juxtaposed collages of spaces and materials that make users appreciative of both the theatre and the back-stage, simultaneously revealed.” President Barack Obama awarded him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.
Gehry’s work didn’t slow down in his later years, with projects including Meta Platforms’ Facebook offices in Menlo Park, Calif., the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, D.C., and a new Guggenheim museum in Abu Dhabi.
Among his final ambitious works, Gehry helped design a master plan for the revitalisation of the Los Angeles River. The 51-mile river, despite running nearly dry most of the year, was once the primary water source for the L.A. basin. After a disastrous flood in 1938, the Army Corps of Engineers paved large swathes of the river, essentially creating a giant concrete flood-control channel and spurring the city’s exponential growth after World War II. Gehry was most recently focused on designs for a continuous greenway and a cultural centre to expand public use of the riverbanks.
Gehry is survived by one of his two daughters from his first marriage, Brina Gehry; his wife, Berta Isabel Aguilera, and their two sons, Alejandro and Samuel. He was preceded in death by his daughter Leslie Gehry.
“Shakespeare said the world’s a stage, and we are players on it,” Gehry told WSJ. Magazine, meditating on the importance of architecture. “I think that we’re creating a stage set for life by building a building. It should enhance the relationship between people rather than destroy it, ” he said. “I think you can make buildings friendlier and more accessible and because of it make it easier for people to meet and get along and interact.”
The Wall Street Journal
To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout