Frank Gehry, who designed some of the most imaginative buildings ever constructed and achieved a level of worldwide acclaim seldom afforded any architect, has died. He was 96.
Gehry passed away on Friday in his home in Santa Monica after a brief respiratory illness, said Meaghan Lloyd, the chief of staff at his firm Gehry Partners LLP.
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Gehry’s fascination with modern pop art led to the creation of some of the most striking buildings ever constructed. Among his many masterpieces are the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles; and Berlin’s DZ Bank Building.
He also designed an expansion of Facebook’s Northern California headquarters at the insistence of the company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.
Gehry was awarded every major prize architecture has to offer, including the field’s top honour, the Pritzker Prize, for what has been described as “refreshingly original and totally American” work.
Other honours include the Royal Institute of British Architects gold medal, the Americans for the Arts lifetime achievement award and his native country’s highest honour, the Companion of the Order of Canada.
Even some of his early work has gained public appreciation.
In 2006, years after Gehry had stopped designing ordinary-looking buildings, word surfaced that the pedestrian Santa Monica mall project he designed early in his career might be headed for the wrecking ball. The project had reportedly led to his career epiphany.
Gehry admirers were aghast, but the man himself was amused.
“They’re going to tear it down now and build the kind of original idea I had,” he said with a laugh.
Eventually, the mall was remodelled, giving it a more contemporary, airy outdoor look. Still, it’s no Gehry masterpiece.
Gehry, meanwhile, continued to work well into his 80s, turning out heralded buildings that remade skylines around the world.
The headquarters of the InterActiveCorp, known as the IAC Building, took the shape of a shimmering beehive when it was completed in New York City’s Chelsea district in 2007. The 76-storey New York By Gehry building, once one of the world’s tallest residential structures, was a stunning addition to the lower Manhattan skyline when it opened in 2011.
That same year, Gehry joined the faculty of his alma mater, the University of Southern California, as a professor of architecture. He also taught at Yale and Columbia University.
Not everyone was a fan of Gehry’s work. Some naysayers dismissed it as not much more than gigantic, lopsided reincarnations of the little scrap-wood cities he said he spent hours building when he was