{"id":4193,"date":"2025-12-06T03:36:22","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T03:36:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2025\/12\/06\/famed-for-sculptural-structures-architect-frank-gehry-dies-at-age-96\/"},"modified":"2025-12-06T03:36:22","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T03:36:22","slug":"famed-for-sculptural-structures-architect-frank-gehry-dies-at-age-96","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2025\/12\/06\/famed-for-sculptural-structures-architect-frank-gehry-dies-at-age-96\/","title":{"rendered":"Famed for sculptural structures, architect Frank Gehry dies at age 96"},"content":{"rendered":"<div aria-live=\"polite\" aria-atomic=\"true\">\n<p>Frank Gehry, who designed some of the most imaginative buildings ever constructed and achieved a level of worldwide acclaim seldom afforded any architect, has died. He was 96.<\/p>\n<p>Gehry passed away on Friday in his home in Santa Monica after a brief respiratory illness, said Meaghan Lloyd, the chief of staff at his firm Gehry Partners LLP.<\/p>\n<section>\n<h2>Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n<p><span>list of 3 items<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span>list 1 of 3<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2025\/6\/11\/beach-boys-visionary-leader-brian-wilson-dies-at-age-82\">Beach Boys visionary leader Brian Wilson dies at age 82<\/a><\/li>\n<li><span>list 2 of 3<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2025\/10\/14\/the-shining-star-of-our-family-rb-singer-dangelo-passes-away-at-age-51\">\u2018The shining star of our family\u2019: R&#038;B singer D\u2019Angelo passes away at age 51<\/a><\/li>\n<li><span>list 3 of 3<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2025\/7\/22\/ozzy-osbourne-black-sabbath-lead-and-godfather-of-heavy-metal-dies-at-76\">Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath frontman and heavy metal icon, dies at 76<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n<p>Gehry\u2019s fascination with modern pop art led to the creation of some of the most striking buildings ever constructed. Among his many masterpieces are the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles; and Berlin\u2019s DZ Bank Building.<\/p>\n<p>He also designed an expansion of Facebook\u2019s Northern California headquarters at the insistence of the company\u2019s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.<\/p>\n<p>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<p>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<p>Even some of his early work has gained public appreciation.<\/p>\n<p>In 2006, years after Gehry had stopped designing ordinary-looking buildings, word surfaced that the pedestrian Santa Monica mall project he designed early in his career might be headed for the wrecking ball. The project had reportedly led to his career epiphany.<\/p>\n<p>Gehry admirers were aghast, but the man himself was amused.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey\u2019re going to tear it down now and build the kind of original idea I had,\u201d he said with a laugh.<\/p>\n<p>Eventually, the mall was remodelled, giving it a more contemporary, airy outdoor look. Still, it\u2019s no Gehry masterpiece.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_4153736\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4153736\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-12-05T194151Z_960050643_RC2JAIAU1BVJ_RTRMADP_3_PEOPLE-FRANK-GEHRY-1764969680.jpg?w=770&#038;resize=770%2C631&#038;quality=80\" alt=\"Frank Gehry in front of the Walt Disney concert hall in Los Angeles.\" fetchpriority=\"low\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-4153736\">Architect Frank Gehry stands in front of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles, California, on February 11, 2019 [Mike Blake\/Reuters]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Gehry, meanwhile, continued to work well into his 80s, turning out heralded buildings that remade skylines around the world.<\/p>\n<p>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-storey 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<p>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<p>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<p>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<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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<figure id=\"attachment_4153764\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4153764\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/AP22260629577634-1764970107.jpg?w=770&#038;resize=770%2C478&#038;quality=80\" alt=\"The Dancing House in Prague\" fetchpriority=\"low\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-4153764\">Architect Frank Gehry designed what\u2019s known as the Dancing House \u2014 or the Fred and Ginger Building \u2014 in Prague, Czech Republic [File: Petr David Josek\/AP Photo]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>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 The Simpsons cartoon show, in which he agreed to design a concert hall that was later converted into a prison.<\/p>\n<p>In that episode, 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\u2019re a genius!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSome people think I actually do that,\u201d he would later tell The Associated Press news agency.<\/p>\n<p>Ephraim Owen Goldberg was born in Toronto on February 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 anti-Semitism might be holding back his career.<\/p>\n<p>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 recognised his talent.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was like the first thing in my life that I\u2019d done well in,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_4153761\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4153761\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/AP25339738174095-1764970092.jpg?w=770&#038;resize=770%2C513&#038;quality=80\" alt=\"Guggenheim museum in Spain\" fetchpriority=\"low\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-4153761\">The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, has come to exemplify Gehry\u2019s style [File: Alvaro Barrientos\/AP Photo]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>He went on to earn a degree in architecture from the University of Southern California in 1954. After serving in the army, he studied urban planning at Harvard University.<\/p>\n<p>His survivors include his wife, Berta; daughter, Brina; sons Alejandro and Samuel; and the buildings he created.<\/p>\n<p>Another daughter, Leslie Gehry Brenner, died of cancer in 2008.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Frank Gehry, who designed some of the most imaginative buildings ever constructed and achieved a level of worldwide acclaim seldom afforded any architect, has died. He was 96. Gehry passed away on Friday in his home in Santa Monica after a brief respiratory illness, said Meaghan Lloyd, the chief of staff at his firm Gehry &#8230; <a title=\"Famed for sculptural structures, architect Frank Gehry dies at age 96\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2025\/12\/06\/famed-for-sculptural-structures-architect-frank-gehry-dies-at-age-96\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Famed for sculptural structures, architect Frank Gehry dies at age 96\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4194,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}