Frank O. Gehry, the architect behind some of the most recognizable commercial structures around the world, has died.
The architecture giant died at his home in Santa Monica, California at the age of 96, the New York Times reported. He was battling a brief respiratory illness prior to his death.
Gehry leaves behind a legacy of envisioning lively structures often characterized by undulating, silver accents, including the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the New World Center concert hall in Miami Beach, the 8 Spruce Street residential tower in New York City and the Fondation Louis Vuitton museum in Paris.
Gehry was born in 1929 and raised in Toronto before moving to Los Angeles with his family in 1947. He studied architecture at the University of Southern California, graduating in 1954, and enlisted in the U.S. Army shortly thereafter. With the help of the G.I. Bill, he went on to study city planning at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
Armed with an education and passion for architecture, Gehry worked as a designer and project manager at Gruen Associates, a firm known for its shopping malls. He opened his own office in 1962 and spent much of his early career working for mainstream developers. Eventually, however, he developed his own style, wanting to buck many of the building trends of the time — something likely birthed out of being introduced to the work of Modernist pioneer Raphael Soriano during his studies.
“I was rebelling against everything,” he told the Times in 2012.
Gehry became a household name — literally — nearly half a century ago with the construction of a home at 1002 22nd Street in Santa Monica that he designed and lived in for four decades. He earned the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1989 and left his mark around the globe with projects that include the Dancing House in Prague; the Biomuseo in Panama City; Maison Hennessy in Cognac, France; the Pierre Boulez Saal concert hall in Berlin; and the Louis Vuitton flagship store in Seoul. He was also one of the first architects to embrace computer design, and that tech pedigree synced up with Facebook when he designed its West Campus in Menlo Park, California.
Gehry is survived by his wife Berta Aguilera and their two sons, architectural designer Sam and artist Alejandro, as well as his daughter Brina Gehry from his previous marriage and his sister Doreen Gehry Nelson.