Frank Gehry, one of the most influential and distinctive talents in American architecture, died Friday at his home in Los Angeles following a brief respiratory illness, his chief of staff confirmed to the New York Times. He was 96.
Gehry, the most recognizable American architect since Frank Lloyd Wright, was one of the first to embrace the potential of computer design, and pioneered a distinctively exuberant style of bravura power, whimsical and arresting collisions of form. His most famous work remains the Guggenheim Museumin Bilbao, a fantastical, titanium-clad composition on the Nervión River which received international acclaim upon its opening in 1997, heralding a new era of emotive architecture.
The project gave its name to a phenomenon – the Bilbao effect – in which decaying old cities tried to spur revival with spectacular architecture, and became, as Guardian critic Rowan Moore put it in 2019, “the icon of what would be called iconic architecture”.
Other famous works included the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, completed in 2003; Miami’s New World Center, a concert hall finished in 2011; and the Fondation Louis Vuitton, an ethereal museum in Paris completed in 2014.
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