Frank Gehry, the Canadian-American architect whose shimmering, undulating buildings redefined contemporary architecture and turned cities into destinations, died on Friday at his home in Santa Monica, California.
He was 96.
The cause was a brief respiratory illness, according to Meaghan Lloyd, chief of staff at Gehry Partners LLP.
Gehry first attracted attention by dramatically remodeling his own modest Santa Monica house with chain-link fencing, plywood, and corrugated metal, rejecting traditional symmetry for a raw, unfinished aesthetic that became known as deconstructivism.
His international breakthrough came in 1997 with the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, its billowing titanium curves credited with revitalizing the city and sparking the “Bilbao effect” of cultural tourism.
Subsequent landmarks included the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Dancing House in Prague, the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, the IAC Building and New York by Gehry tower in New York, and the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago.
Gehry received nearly every major architectural honor, including the 1989 Pritzker Architecture Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016, the Companion of the Order of Canada, and the Royal Institute of British Architects gold medal.
While widely celebrated for his improvisational, jazz-like creativity, some critics labeled later works oppressive or tourist-focused, and a proposed Eisenhower Memorial in Washington drew objections from the former president’s family over its elaborate metal tapestries.
Gehry, often amused by detractors, once appeared as himself on The Simpsons, jokingly designing a concert hall by crumpling a letter.
Born Ephraim Owen Goldberg in Toronto on February 28, 1929, Gehry moved to Los Angeles in 1947, graduated from the University of Southern California in 1954, and briefly studied at Harvard.
He is survived by his wife, Berta Isabel Aguilera; sons Alejandro and Samuel; and daughter Brina.
Another daughter, Leslie Gehry Brenner, died in 2008.