{"id":2018,"date":"2025-12-08T21:45:30","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T21:45:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tona.today\/?p=2018"},"modified":"2025-12-08T21:45:31","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T21:45:31","slug":"frank-gehry-world-renowned-architect-dies-at-96","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tona.today\/?p=2018","title":{"rendered":"Frank Gehry, world renowned architect, dies at 96"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Frank Gehry, who in the second half of the 20th century forged a new language in architecture, becoming one of the most famous architects of his time, has died at the age of 96, according to a spokesperson at Gehry Partners. He died at his home in Santa Monica after a brief respiratory illness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gehry was born in Toronto, Canada. After studying architecture at the University of Southern California and urban planning at Harvard, he set up his practice in Los Angeles in 1962.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Rema - Baby (Is it a Crime) [Official Video]\" width=\"980\" height=\"551\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MsZhYgo9MoA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Redeveloping his own home using utilitarian materials \u2014 cinder blocks, plywood, corrugated metal and chain-link fencing \u2014 helped jump-start his career in 1978 in and around the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe bought this tiny little bungalow in Santa Monica and for like 50 grand, I built a house around it,\u201d he told TED founder Richard Saul Wurman in a 2008 discussion. \u201cAnd a few people got excited about it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1989, which vaulted him and his work to international acclaim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But Gehry was in his late 60s when he received the commission for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, perhaps the most critically-acclaimed and renowned building of his career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 1998, the late Philip Johnson, the godfather of American modern architecture, stood in the atrium and was moved to tears. According to Vanity Fair, he anointed Gehry \u201cthe greatest architect we have today.\u201d It was a rare moment in architecture: critics, academics and the public collectively enraptured by a single building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gehry transformed our idea of what was architecturally possible, shaping and sculpting buildings with the same software used to design fighter jets. The titanium-clad Guggenheim swooped, curved and shimmered by a river, which Vanity Fair correspondent Matt Tyrnauer likened to \u201ca gargantuan bouquet of writhing silver fish.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fish were a recurrent theme in Gehry\u2019s work, but his designs were also sparked by ideas as diverse as the shape of Japanese Buddhist temples, ice hockey and Stratocaster guitars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Guggenheim led to a series of high-profile commissions: the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle (2000), Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles (2003), the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris (2014) among them. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2016. Gehry brought spectacle and showmanship to the field, undoubtedly, but did not see such qualities in himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou are not going to call me a f***ing \u2018starchitect\u2019?\u201d he told a Financial Times reporter in 2013. \u201cI hate that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In person, Gehry was a plain-speaking, soft-spoken and good-humored, if occasionally cantankerous, communicator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He had many close collaborators over the years, and those who knew him spoke to both his momentous impact and his character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bernard Arnault, chairman and CEO of LVMH, who worked with Gehry across multiple projects including the Louis Vuitton Foundation, called the architect \u201ca dear friend\u201d in a statement posted to X.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI owe to him one of the longest, most intense, and most ambitious creative partnerships I have ever had the privilege to experience,\u201d he said. \u201cHe will remain a genius of lightness, transparency, and grace.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>US representative and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi called him \u201ca gentleman titan of architecture and a master communicator of the future,\u201d in a statement posted to X, praising his contributions to global visual culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cFrank left an indelible mark on his beloved Los Angeles, in California, across America, and indeed around the world \u2014 not only through his designs, but also through his generosity,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Describing his aesthetic, Gehry once told Vanity Fair: \u201cOverall, the kind of language I\u2019ve developed, which culminated in Bilbao, comes from a reaction to Postmodernism. I was desperate not to go there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He simply had an aversion to historical pastiche.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI said to myself, \u2018If you have to go backward, why not go back 300 million years before man, to fish?,\u2019\u201d he continued. \u201cAnd that\u2019s when I started with this fish shtick, as I think of it, and started drawing the damn things, and I realized that they were architectural, conveying motion even when they were not moving.\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/2025\/12\/05\/style\/architect-frank-gehry-dies?iid=cnn_buildContentRecirc_end_recirc&amp;recs_exp=up-next-article-end&amp;tenant_id=related.en\">(CNN)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Frank Gehry, who in the second half of the 20th century forged a new language in architecture, becoming one of the most famous architects of his time, has died at the age of 96, according to a spokesperson at Gehry Partners. He died at his home in Santa Monica after a brief respiratory illness. Gehry [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2019,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[2412,1993,2414,2411,2413],"class_list":["post-2018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-foreign","tag-architecture","tag-barack-obama","tag-bernard-arnault","tag-frank-gehry","tag-nancy-pelosi"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Frank Gehry, world renowned architect, dies at 96 - Tona Today<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Frank Gehry, who in the second half of the 20th century forged a new language in architecture, becoming one of the most famous\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/tona.today\/?p=2018\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Frank Gehry, world renowned architect, dies at 96 - 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