Gehry tops list of influential modernist architects

alternate textFrom left: Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao, Foster’s HSBC Building and Piano’s Menil Collection

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Starchitect Frank Gehry has nabbed yet another accolade: the title of Modernism’s “greatest renegade,” courtesy of Vanity Fair, which surveyed 52 industry experts to name their choice for most influential piece of architecture built since 1980. Gehry’s winning work, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, which was completed in 1997, shared the honor with other recent works, including Sir Norman Foster’s HSBC Building in Hong Kong, which was finished in 1985, and Renzo Piano’s Menil Collection, completed in Houston in 1987. But, despite the other worthy contenders, Paul Goldberger, a noted architecture critic, said that the Guggenheim Bilbao has a universal appeal. “Bilbao was one of those rare moments when critics, academics and the general public were all completely united,” Goldberger said. [Vanity Fair]