PHOTO One of the world's greatest architects, the creator of the Guggenheim Museum and the Louis Vuitton Foundation, has died. Frank Gehry was 96 years old
Frank Gehry Photo: Chris Pizzello / AP / Profimedia
The American-Canadian architect Frank Gehry, famous for his bold and fanciful creations such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, or the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, died on Friday at the age of 96, reports AFP and Reuters, cited by Agerpres.
Frank Gehry died “this morning at his home in Santa Monica following a brief respiratory illness,” the architect's office said in an email sent to AFP.
Gehry's emblematic works are the testimony of his boldness and artistic genius, which marked and revolutionized the history of architecture. Through his projects, Frank Gehry blurred the border between architecture and art.
His real name was Frank Owen Goldberg, born in Toronto on February 28, 1929 in a family of Jewish origin that moved to the United States in the late 1940s.
The architect, who has his own character in an episode of “The Simpsons”, studies architecture in Los Angeles at the University of Southern California. He got his license in 1954 and, around the same time, changed his name to Gehry to protect himself from anti-Semitism. He then enlisted in the US Army while studying urban planning at Harvard University.
The years 1970-1980 mark the beginning of a long series of daring and innovative architectural achievements. Close to the Californian avant-garde, he invents new principles of architectural composition and explores computer modeling techniques, which will occupy an important place in his work. In 1989, he received the highest distinction in the world of architecture, the Pritzker Prize.
Inaugurated in 1997, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain brings it worldwide recognition. The building, with an undulating fish-like shape, the architect's signature, is constructed of limestone, glass and light-reflecting titanium curves.
Equally spectacular and daring projects follow: the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles (2003), the skyscraper at number 8 Spruce Street, New York (2011), the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris (2014). In 2018, the construction of the new headquarters of the Facebook company in Silicon Valley was completed.
