Prolific architect Frank Gehry dies at age 96 – NBC Los Angeles

Famed architect and designer Frank Gehry, whose imaginative designs played a key role in shaping the urban landscape of Los Angeles, has died at 96.

Meaghan Lloyd, chief of staff at Gehry Partners, LLP said Gehry died Friday morning in Santa Monica following a brief respiratory illness.

Gehry rose to prominence in the 1970s and went on to become one of the most prolific architects in modern history. There are more than 20 Gehry-designed buildings in Los Angeles, including the shimmering Walt Disney Concert Hall. Completed in 2003 on Grand Avenue in downtown LA, the dramatically curving exterior walls are made from 6,000 steel panels.

“Architecture can be more than just boxes, straight lines, grids and modules, as he used to describe it, which is the sort of stuff he was being taught at this university in the 1950s,” said USC School of Architecture Prof. Brett Steele, the school’s dean. “He used to say that buildings can move, more than anything, that buildings are all about movement. And he just holds on to that belief and then has to develop ways as an architect to actually realize that. And I think that’s the thing that’s so inspiring to so many people.”

David McNew/Getty Images

David McNew/Getty Images

Gehry also designed the Gehry Residence, several Loyola Law School buildings, the Spiller House, Binoculars Building and Norton House in Venice Beach, Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in Long Beach and the Air and Space exhibit building at the California Museum of Science and Industry.

“He is somebody who is accessible while also being bewildering,” said Chicago Architecture Center historian Adam Rubin, whose mother worked as an intern with Gehry. “He is somebody who is local, but also is entirely global. “It never felt out of place. It never feels like a spaceship just landed in Bilbao or in Los Angeles or in Chicago or wherever. It always feels very of the of the landscape.”

One of his most well-known and ambitious projects was a branch of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain that opened in 1997 and earned world acclaim. He also designed Berlin’s DZ Bank Building.

In the 1970s, Gehry and acoustician Christopher Jaffee were hired to improve acoustics at the Hollywood Bowl.

“He’s an entry point into thinking about architecture as something that is special for people who have never thought about architecture before,” said Rubin. “Those are huge shoes to fill.”

Born in Toronto, Ontario, Los Angeles became Gehry’s adopted hometown after his family’s move to Southern California in 1947. He received a bachelor’s degree at USC in 1954 and enlisted in the U.S. Army. After studying City Planning at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Gehry established a practice in LA in 1962.

Gehry has won every major prize in architecture, including the field’s top honor, the Pritzker Prize. He also earned the Royal Institute of British Architects gold medal, the Americans for the Arts lifetime achievement award, and his native country’s highest honor, the Companion of the Order of Canada.

Gehry continued to work into his 80s, designing the headquarters of InerActiveCorp, known as the IAC Building, in New York City, completed in 2007. That same year, he joined the faculty of his alma mater, USC, as a professor of architecture.

Several Gehry projects in the Los Angeles are under construction, including the Colburn School Expansion, Gladstones Restaurant and Veterans’ Affairs housing in West Los Angeles. Other Gehry projects under construction in Toronto, UAE, Paris and London.

The Ocean Avenue Project in Santa Monica, a Los Angeles River revitalization project and the Southeast Los Angeles Cultural Center are among LA-area projects in the design phase.

Gehry received a National Medal of Arts from President Bill Clinton and a Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.