World-renowned Canadian-American architect and designer Frank Gehry has died at the age of 96 after a short respiratory illness. He passed away on Friday at his home in Santa Monica, California, said Meaghan Lloyd, chief of staff at Gehry Partners LLP.<\/p>\n
Gehry designed some of the most imaginative buildings ever constructed and achieved a level of acclaim seldom afforded any architect<\/p>\n
His fascination with modern pop art led to the creation of distinctive, striking buildings. Among his many masterpieces are the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and Berlin\u2019s DZ Bank Building.<\/p>\n
He also designed an expansion of Facebook\u2019s Northern California headquarters at the insistence of the company\u2019s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.<\/p>\n
Gehry was awarded every major prize architecture has to offer, including the field\u2019s top honour, the Pritzker Prize, for what has been described as \u201crefreshingly original and totally American\u201d work.<\/p>\n
Other honours include the Royal Institute of British Architects gold medal, the Americans for the Arts lifetime achievement award, and his native country\u2019s highest honour, the Companion of the Order of Canada.<\/p>\n
The start of his career in architecture<\/p>\n
After earning a degree in architecture from the University of Southern California in 1954 and serving in the Army, Gehry studied urban planning at Harvard University.<\/p>\n
But his career got off to a slow start. He struggled for years to make ends meet, designing public housing projects, shopping centres and even driving a delivery truck for a time.<\/p>\n
Eventually, he got the chance to design a modern shopping mall overlooking the Santa Monica Pier. He was determined to play it safe and came up with drawings for an enclosed shopping mall that looked similar to others in the United States in the 1980s.<\/p>\n
To celebrate its completion, the mall\u2019s developer dropped by Gehry\u2019s house and was stunned by what he saw: The architect had transformed a modest 1920s-era bungalow into an inventive abode by remodelling it with chain-link fencing, exposed wood and corrugated metal.<\/p>\n
Asked why he hadn\u2019t proposed something similar for the mall, Gehry replied, \u201cBecause I have to make a living.\u201d<\/p>\n
If he really wanted to make a statement as an architect, he was told, he should drop that attitude and follow his creative vision.<\/p>\n
Gehry would do just that for the rest of his life, working into his 90s to create buildings that doubled as stunning works of art.<\/p>\n
As his acclaim grew, Gehry Partners LLP, the architectural firm he founded in 1962, grew with it, expanding to include more than 130 employees at one point. But as big as it got, Gehry insisted on personally overseeing every project it took on.<\/p>\n
The headquarters of the InterActiveCorp, known as the IAC Building, took the shape of a shimmering beehive when it was completed in New York City\u2019s Chelsea district in 2007. The 76-story New York By Gehry building, once one of the world\u2019s tallest residential structures, was a stunning addition to the lower Manhattan skyline when it opened in 2011.<\/p>\n
That same year, Gehry joined the faculty of his alma mater, the University of Southern California, as a professor of architecture. He also taught at Yale and Columbia University.<\/p>\n
Imaginative designs drew criticism along with praise<\/p>\n
Not everyone was a fan of Gehry\u2019s work. Some naysayers dismissed it as not much more than gigantic, lopsided reincarnations of the little scrap-wood cities he said he spent hours building when he was growing up in the mining town of Timmins, Ontario.<\/p>\n
Princeton art critic Hal Foster dismissed many of his later efforts as \u201coppressive,\u201d arguing they were designed primarily to be tourist attractions. Some denounced the Disney Hall as looking like a collection of cardboard boxes that had been left out in the rain.<\/p>\n
Still other critics included Dwight D. Eisenhower\u2019s family, who objected to Gehry\u2019s bold proposal for a memorial to honour the nation\u2019s 34th president. Although the family said it wanted a simple memorial and not the one Gehry had proposed, with its multiple statues and billowing metal tapestries depicting Eisenhower\u2019s life, the architect declined to change his design significantly.<\/p>\n
If the words of his critics annoyed Gehry, he rarely let on. Indeed, he even sometimes played along. He appeared as himself in a 2005 episode of \u201cThe Simpsons\u201d cartoon show, in which he agreed to design a concert hall that was later converted into a prison.<\/p>\n
He came up with the idea for the design, which looked a lot like the Disney Hall, after crumpling Marge Simpson\u2019s letter to him and throwing it on the ground. After taking a look at it, he declared, \u201cFrank Gehry, you\u2019ve done it again!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSome people think I actually do that,\u201d he would later tell the press.<\/p>\n
Gehry’s lasting legacy around the world<\/p>\n
Ephraim Owen Goldberg was born in Toronto on Feb. 28, 1929, and moved to Los Angeles with his family in 1947, eventually becoming a US citizen. As an adult, he changed his name at the suggestion of his first wife, who told him antisemitism might be holding back his career.<\/p>\n
Although he had enjoyed drawing and building model cities as a child, Gehry said it wasn\u2019t until he was 20 that he pondered the possibility of pursuing a career in architecture, after a college ceramics teacher recognized his talent.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was like the first thing in my life that I\u2019d done well in,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Gehry steadfastly denied being an artist though.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, architects in the past have been both sculptors and architects,\u201d he declared in a 2006 interview with The Associated Press. \u201cBut I still think I\u2019m doing buildings, and it\u2019s different from what they do.\u201d<\/p>\n
His words reflected both a lifelong shyness and an insecurity that stayed with Gehry long after he\u2019d been declared the greatest architect of his time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m totally flabbergasted that I got to where I\u2019ve gotten,\u201d he told press in 2001. \u201cNow it seems inevitable, but at the time it seemed very problematic.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Gehry-designed Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi, first proposed in 2006, is expected to finally be completed in 2026 after a series of construction delays and sporadic work. The 30,000-square-foot (2,787-square-meter) structure will be the world’s largest Guggenheim, leaving a lasting legacy in the capital city of the United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n
His survivors include his wife, Berta; daughter, Brina; sons Alejandro and Samuel; and the buildings he created.<\/p>\n
Another daughter, Leslie Gehry Brenner, died of cancer in 2008.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World-renowned Canadian-American architect and designer Frank Gehry has died at the age of 96 after a short respiratory…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[859,437,434,435,436,3190,438,10349,146,85,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-171158","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-architecture","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-artsdesign","13":"tag-death","14":"tag-design","15":"tag-designers","16":"tag-entertainment","17":"tag-il","18":"tag-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}