Gehry behind one of his signature shiny facades.
Photo: Patrick Aventurier/Getty Images
Frank Gehry, the architect whose work was so identifiable that he guest starred on The Simpsons, is dead at 96. Meaghan Lloyd, chief of staff at Gehry Partners LLP, told the Associated Press that Gehry died in his Santa Monica home after a brief respiratory illness. Gehry won every major architecture prize there is, per the Associated Press, including the ultra-prestigious Pritzker Prize. His work was described as “refreshingly original and totally American” despite him being Canadian. Gehry won both Americans for the Arts lifetime achievement award and the Companion of the Order of Canada. He is survived by his second wife, Berta, and children Brina, Alejandro, and Samuel.
Gehry was born Ephraim Owen Goldberg in 1929. He moved with his family from his native Toronto to Los Angeles in 1947. At the suggestion of his first wife, he changed his name, who worried antisemitism would hold back his career. Gehry pursued architecture after a ceramics teacher saw his talent for three-dimensional art. “It was like the first thing in my life that I’d done well in,” he said. Gehry went to USC for architecture and eventually studied city planning at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. He dropped out of Harvard to start a furniture company that specialized in making pieces out of cardboard.
Gehry designed his first private residence in 1958. The David Cabin was built in Idyllwild, California. From there, Gehry moved to Paris to study under Andre Remondet. He opened his own shingle in 1967 back in L.A. His first big projects included open-air mall Santa Monica Place and his own home in Santa Monica — a pink bungalow wrapped in chain-link fence, concrete, and glass. In 1977, it was one of the first famous deconstructivist buildings.
Gehry’s signature style included sloping walls and shining metallic façades. Everywhere else, he eschewed the rectangle. Metal tiles were always battling to cover the organic forms he built, creating tension between the mechanical and nature. This drama played out on buildings like the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, and the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris.
