American-Canadian architect Frank Gehry died on Friday at age 96 from a respiratory illness in Santa Monica, California. Renowned for his bold, deconstructivist forms, he shaped architecture with iconic works like the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. His death leaves a vast legacy of innovation and urban renewal.
Frank Gehry, born in 1929 in Toronto and arriving in the United States at 17, changed his name from Frank Owen Goldberg to Frank Owen Gehry in 1954. Son of a merchant with a music-loving mother, he began his career in the 1960s, working for developers and urban planning agencies while designing individual homes and artists' studios. Close to artists like Richard Serra and Jasper Johns, he drew inspiration from European culture, from Le Corbusier to Romanesque churches.
His Santa Monica house, extended in the 1970s around a 1920s bungalow using cheap materials like corrugated metal and chain-link fencing, became an architectural manifesto. In 1978, the Gehry House established the foundations of his patchwork style. The Loyola Law School in Los Angeles in 1984, with its bright colors and freestanding columns, solidified his reputation for radicalism.
The Guggenheim in Bilbao, opened in 1997 with 33,000 titanium panels and asymmetrical forms, revitalized the industrial city, drawing over a million visitors annually. The Dancing House in Prague in 1996, a collaboration with Vlado Milunić, evokes a dancing couple and is a tourist attraction.
The Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, opened in 2014 for Bernard Arnault, with its twelve glass sails and 13,500 m² greenhouse inspired by the Palmarium, symbolizes modernity. “A building that evolves with the hour and light, like a changing world,” Gehry said. The Fondation Luma in Arles, a 156-meter tower for Maja Hoffmann, shows his enduring enthusiasm at 88.
Winner of the Pritzker in 1989 and the Golden Lion in 2008, Gehry used digital modeling from the 1990s for incredible forms, as in the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, completed in 2026. Bernard Arnault responded: “I am immensely saddened by the death of Frank Gehry, in whom I lose a very dear friend and for whom I will always retain infinite admiration.” His works, from the French Cinematheque to the Walt Disney Concert Hall, free architecture from classical canons.