Canadian architect and naturalized U.S. citizen Frank Owen Gehry, one of the great names in recent architectural history, passed away in the Italian night at his residence in Santa Monica, California. He was 96 years old and recognized as one of America’s leading architects and beyond. Born Frank Owen Goldberg on February 28, 1929, in Toronto, Ontario, to parents of Jewish-Polish and Russian-American descent, Gehry emigrated with his family to the United States in 1947, settling in California. During his youth, his creative talents were nurtured by his mother and particularly his grandmother, Leah Caplan, who entertained him for hours building imaginary cities and futuristic houses out of scraps of wood from her husband’s hardware store. This early exposure to raw materials profoundly influenced his future style. Although his father considered him a dreamer, it was his mother who pushed him toward creativity.
After working several jobs, including truck driver in Los Angeles, and briefly attempting to study chemical engineering and radio announcements, Gehry enrolled, almost by intuition, in architecture courses. He graduated from the School of Architecture at the University of Southern California in 1954. In the same year, he changed his last name from Goldberg to Gehry, a decision he made because of the concerns of his then-wife, Anita Snyder, about anti-Semitism. After serving in the U.S. Army and working in various jobs not strictly related to architecture, he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1956 to study urban planning at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.
However, Gehry developed a deep disinterest in Harvard’s academic institution, feeling disheartened by the failure to live up to his progressive ideas on socially responsible architecture. His growing dislike culminated after he discovered that a “secret architectural project” under discussion was actually a palace intended for Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, leading him to abandon the graduate program. After leaving Harvard, he returned to Los Angeles and moved to Paris for a time in 1961 to work with architect Andre Remonde before establishing his own firm in Los Angeles in 1962, which became Frank Gehry and Associates in 1967 and finally Gehry Partners in 2001.
Gehry became famous in the 1970s for a distinctive style that combined common or utilitarian materials, such as corrugated steel, wire mesh, and unpainted plywood, with dynamic and complex structures. This approach, which resisted rigid categorization, was often described as “deconstructivist,” although the architect himself rejected that label. His works often displayed an unfinished or even crude appearance, in keeping with the California “funk” art movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which used cheap found objects and nontraditional materials to create serious art. Despite this apparent crudeness, a 1988 retrospective at the Whitney Museum in New York revealed his deep knowledge of European art history and contemporary painting and sculpture. Gehry, in fact, considered architecture to be inherently sculptural, arguing, “I always thought that architecture was, by definition, a three-dimensional object, therefore sculpture.” His early collaborations with sculptors played a crucial role in shaping his experimental approach, which included deconstructing conventional architectural forms and adopting concepts of flow.
Among his earliest and most emblematic projects is the renovation of his private residence in Santa Monica, completed in 1977. The original home, built in 1920, was wrapped in a metal cladding that allowed glimpses of pre-existing details, a project that helped solidify his bold reputation.
Gehry’s leap to international fame came in 1997 with the opening of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain. The building, celebrated as a masterpiece of the 20th century, became famous for its aesthetically pleasing yet striking design, featuring sculptural, often swaying exteriors and innovative use of materials such as titanium and stainless steel. The museum’s impact on the economy and culture of the city of Bilbao was so extraordinary that it coined the term “Bilbao Effect” to describe the phenomenon of urban revitalization generated by iconic and innovative architecture. In its first twelve months of operation, the museum added about $160 million to the Basque economy, with a total increase of more than $3.5 billion through 2014 .
Bilbao’s success allowed Gehry to regularly secure major international commissions, establishing him as one of the world’s most remarkable architects. Among his most acclaimed works is the Walt Disney Concert Hall (2003) in Los Angeles, whose sinuous and boisterous forms are considered the centerpiece of the neighborhood’s redevelopment. Other major contributions include the Dancing House in Prague (1996), the New World Center in Miami Beach (2011), the Stata Center at MIT (2004), the Toledo Museum of Art (2013), the Peter B. Lewis Library in Princeton (2008), and the Dr Chau Chak Wing building at the University of Technology Sydney (2014), with its brick facade described as a “crumpled paper bag,” a design Gehry declared he would never replicate again.
Despite his immense notoriety, Gehry has always expressed his displeasure with the term “archistar,” insisting that he is simply an architect. His influence extends far beyond architecture; Gehry was also active in the field of design. Abandoning urban planning at Harvard, he founded the company Easy Edges, specializing in cardboard furniture, his first furniture line produced between 1969 and 1973. He later produced the “Bentwood Furniture” line in 1992 and collaborated with Tiffany & Co. on several collections of jewelry and household items, including a chess set and tableware. He also designed bottles for spirits and yachts.
A recurring motif in his work was fish, an inspiration born almost by accident. Gehry explained that while his colleagues were recreating Greek temples, he wanted to go back even further in evolutionary history: “Three hundred million years before man there was fish...if you have to go back and you’re unsure about going forward...go back three hundred million years. Why do you stop at the Greeks?” From this fascination came the first “Fish Lamps” (1984-1986) and public sculptures such as the Fish Sculpture in Barcelona (1989-92).
Over the course of his long career, Gehry received numerous awards, including the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1989, considered the highest honor in the field, with the jury praising his continued openness to experimentation and his ability to withstand both critical acceptance and his own successes. He also received the National Medal of Arts (1998) and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2016) in the United States. Passionate about ice hockey, a typical sport in his native country, Gehry also designed the official trophy for the World Cup of Hockey in 2004 and redesigned it in 2016.
Gehry has also played a significant role in academia, teaching at several prestigious universities, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and the University of Toronto. In 2011, he joined the faculty of the University of Southern California (USC) as Judge Widney Professor of Architecture. His firm was also a pioneer in architectural software innovation, developing Digital Project and GTeam, through the company Gehry Technologies, founded in 2002.
In recent years, he has distinguished himself for his philanthropic efforts, co-founding Turnaround Arts: California in 2014 to expand access to the arts in underfunded schools. He has also donated his time to design pro bono buildings, such as the Children’s Institute in Watts and the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA) education center, completed in 2021.
His latest major international works include the Biomuseum in Panama City and the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, both of which opened in 2014 to generally positive reviews. Although some ambitious projects were delayed or not realized, such as the expansion of the Corcoran Art Gallery and some projects in New York, his work continues to influence the urban landscape. His death from a respiratory condition in his Santa Monica home marked the end of an era for architecture, leaving a legacy of buildings that have become tourist destinations in their own right, transforming the very concept of the urban landscape.
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| Farewell to Frank Gehry, one of the greatest contemporary architects |
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