Frank Gehry, the legendary Canadian-American architect based in Los Angeles who designed the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the campuses used by Google and Facebook, has died at his home in Santa Monica, according to multiple reports. He was 96 years old.
Gehry’s revolutionary designs blend geometric and organic shapes, combining wood and steel in unusual and often striking ways. His creations not only stop passers-by in their tracks; Its buildings often transform the cities in which they are located.
The architect is best known to Angelinos as the designer of the iconic Walt Disney Concert Hall, with its curved steel lines that seem to change with the sun, transforming from moment to moment like music. But it’s not just the shiny exterior that has captivated visitors. Home to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Walt Disney Concert Hall was designed as one of the most acoustically sophisticated concert halls in the world, with Douglas fir walls and ceiling and oak flooring.
The project was not cheap. Lillian Disney made an initial donation of $50 million in 1987 in tribute to Walt Disney’s dedication to the arts and the city. The final cost was approximately $274 million. This included an estimated total contribution from the Disney family of $84.5 million, as well as an additional $25 million from the Walt Disney Company itself.
The building has been usurped The Simpsons and appeared in Iron Man, Collateral, The soloist And Furious 7among many other projects. Matrix revolutions held its world premiere there in 2003.
The Walt Disney Concert Hall, designed by Frank Gehry (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
“A living room for the city” is how Gehry described his intention for the project. It’s certainly become something of a hub, not only for the LA Phil, but also for the revitalization of downtown. The venue opened in 2003 and helped bring the ’60s vibe of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and Music Center into the new century. The Broad was added to the collection in 2015. It also sparked a renewed interest in downtown residential living, including Gehry’s own contribution: Greater LA.
The mixed-use development, designed by Gehry, combines shopping, dining and living. It includes an entertainment plaza, a 39-story residential tower called The Grand Residences, and the Conrad Los Angeles Hilton hotel.
“We don’t just build buildings,” Gehry told the Los Angeles Times of revitalization, “we build places.”
If any of his creations can claim this mantra, it’s probably the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. This is the building that made Gehry famous.
Famed architect Philip Johnson called it “the greatest building of our time” when it opened in 1997. The museum’s use of organic forms challenges the boxy, geometric modernism of mid-century. Its fluid titanium surface evokes, from different angles, the idea of a flower, sails or the bow of a ship. The latter two are particularly important for Bilbao; The Basque Country city was a major center of shipbuilding during the Industrial Revolution and most of the 20th century. The building showcases this proud history.
The Guggenheim not only revitalized the city architecturally, but also financially. Gehry’s building has become a destination for cultured tourists. By one estimate, the museum would have increased annual revenues for the city’s businesses by $500 million.
Given its visual impact, the building has been featured in numerous music videos as well as the opening sequence of The world is not enough (1999).
Gehry’s list of buildings includes the iconic Twin Building in Venice, which today houses Google’s Silicon Beach campus. The building overlooking the main street is especially notable for the giant sculpture by artists Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen in front. It was originally built for TBWA/Chiat/Day in 1991.
Google’s Venice campus is located partly in the Binoculars building, designed by Gehry (Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)
Across the coast, Gehry’s first complete building design in New York was the 10-story IAC Building. Completed in 2007, the headquarters of Barry Diller’s Internet company consists of a large base of large twisting towers, with a second group of similar, but smaller, towers planted at the top.
Gehry originally wanted to use titanium for the exterior, but Diller wanted glass. The result is floor-to-ceiling windows on each floor that turn from clear to white when the sun hits them, providing shade for the building’s occupants.
The striking building appeared in The other guys (2010) and Wall Street: money never sleeps (2010).
The Frank Gehry-designed IAC building on Manhattan’s West Side Expressway (John Moore/Getty Images)
Gehry also designed The Second Century project for Warner Bros. It consists of two LEED-certified office buildings located within the Burbank Studios, adjacent to the main Warner Bros. lot. in Burbank’s Media District. The 800,000-square-foot office building complex evokes a pile of blocks of ice stacked on top of each other. It includes a seven-story building of approximately 355,000 square feet and a nine-story building of approximately 445,000 square feet.
He is behind the design of the new Facebook campus in Menlo Park, Cupertino, after bonding with the Silicon Valley giant’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, over a simple design. The building, completed in 2018, spans 22 acres.
Last month, the California Coastal Commission approved an application for a Gehry-designed and Wolfgang Puck-managed site at the Gladstones site in Malibu, subject to conditions.
The development will include a new 17,712 square foot restaurant (that’s down from Gladstones’ 20,000 square foot restaurant and food patio), a 2,094 square foot public terrace with seating, two public toilets, a cafe and a retail store.
Gehry’s other buildings in the Los Angeles area include the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in San Pedro and the California Aerospace Museum at the California Museum of Science and Industry. He began preparatory work on the Loius Vuitton building in Paris in 2006, inspired by 19th-century glass garden buildings adjacent to the Jardin d’Acclimatation. He also designed the new postmodern Cinémathèque française which moved to 51, rue de Bercy in the 12th arrondissement of Paris in 2005.
Gehry received his profession’s highest honor, the Pritzker Architecture Prize, in 1989. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Obama in 2016. He studied architecture at the University of Southern California from 1949 to 1951 and 1954, then studied urban planning at Harvard from 1956 to 1957.
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