"I think I could set my sights higher than architect.
Posted on 12/07/2025 3:46:55 PM PST by nickcarraway
Frank Gehry, creator of the iconic Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, has died By Adam Woodward • Published: 06 Dec 2025 • 10:03 • 2 minutes read
Frank Gehry & Guggenheim Bilbao. Frank Gehry & Guggenheim Bilbao. Credit: Rudy Mareel - Shutterstock
Frank O. Gehry, the Canadian-American architect whose audacious, sculptural designs liberated modern architecture and whose Guggenheim Museum Bilbao revolutionised urban planning and firmly put the post-industrial city on the global map, died on Friday, December 5, at his home in Santa Monica. He was 96. The cause was a brief respiratory illness, confirmed by his firm.
Widely considered one of the most important designers since Frank Lloyd Wright, Gehry was the most prominent voice of Deconstructivism, a style characterised by fragmented forms, non-rectilinear shapes, and a rejection of traditional cool formalism. His buildings, clad in shimmering titanium and steel, blurred the lines between architecture and sculpture, challenging both critics and the public.
The ever lasting “Bilbao Effect” Gehry’s most impactful creation, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, opened in 1997 on the banks of the Nervión River in Spain, single-handedly placing the once-shabby, post-industrial Basque city on the global cultural map and helping the city to regain the pride it needed to put an end to separatist terrorism. The curving, seemingly chaotic titanium-clad structure was an instant international sensation, drawing upward of 1 million visitors a year and generating massive economic and cultural revitalisation.
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This transformative process, coined the “Bilbao Effect“, became a global blueprint for urban renewal driven by a single piece of landmark architecture. The success was so profound that in 1997, his peer, the eminent architect Philip Johnson, proclaimed the Bilbao museum “the greatest building of our time”.
A legacy of not only curves
Gehry’s vision extended far further than Bilbao. His other unmistakable works include the sweeping curves of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles (2003), the distinctive Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris (2014), and the bold, raw aesthetic of his own Gehry Residence in Santa Monica.
Essentially, Gehry’s practice pioneered the use of CATIA software, initially developed for the French aerospace industry, to translate his spontaneous physical models into precise, constructible blueprints. This innovation helped usher in the era of digital design in architecture. A winner of the 1989 Pritzker Prize, architecture’s highest honour, Gehry received global recognition eight years before the Guggenheim was even completed, making him recognised as a revolutionary long before the titanium sheen of Bilbao captured the world’s imagination.
Frank Gehry, born Frank Owen Goldberg in 1929, leaves behind a legacy defined by risk-taking and an emotional, visceral power in his buildings that revived architectural spirit after decades of restraint. He will be remembered not just for the spectacle of his forms but for irrevocably changing the way buildings are designed and how cities utilise architecture to dream again.
Yes I have yet to go to Disney Concert Hall been meaning to.
God rest his soul and condolences to his loved ones. Not saying his style is my favorite, but he did add interesting architecture to US cityscapes. And we need more not less of that!
I thought George Costanza did some work on that?
Love that clip! Thanks for sharing. LoL how literal and true it may well be. 🗾🏛️
Memory Eternal!
Here’s the MIT building he designed:
https://www.reddit.com/r/architecture/comments/vfcrx1/frank_gehrys_stata_center_at_mit_in_cambridge/
It’s the only Gehry building that I ever visited—and I even attended events in it!
From the outside, it looks as if it is falling apart. But from the inside, it looks normal!
I went and searched for images of the Guggenhiem Museum Bilbao. I was taught to always speak well of the dead. But I am obviously a Luddite who misses the genius this design. I really need George Costanza to explain it to me.
Becoming a starchitect is a longshot romantic dream for many, and colleges have noticed, turning the dream into a major cash cow business. Most of the money made in architecture is made by the colleges, producing way more architects than there are jobs. The washout rate is criminal.
The builders and workmen deserve credit for erecting a building that seems it is seconds from disaster.
I think I thought it was Art Vandalay.
His stuff is butt ugly.
L
Apropos to Pearl Harbor Day, my friend Lou Conter, last survivor the USS Arizona, died at 102 1/2 last year. He told me he was not afraid to die, appear before the throne of God, and say “I did my best.”’Gehry can do the same. But, like you, I don’t care for his work
"I think I could set my sights higher than architect.
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