Bold and Whimsical Designs: Architectural Master Gehry Dies at 96

Canadian-born American architect Gehry passed away on the 5th at the age of 96. He was renowned for his bold and whimsical designs, with works from the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain to the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles highly favored by architecture enthusiasts and critics alike.

Gehry's (Frank Gehry) representative, Lloyd, told AFP that Gehry died that morning at his home in Santa Monica, California, due to a respiratory disease.

The hallmark of Gehry's work lies in the use of deconstructed, twisted metal to create dance-like lines.

Gehry was born in 1929 to a Jewish family in Toronto, Canada. In the late 1940s, his family moved to the United States. He studied architecture at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and, after graduation, joined the US Army.

From 1961, he worked in Paris for architect Hemon, but soon returned to Los Angeles to found his own firm. In the 1970s and 1980s, he launched a series of bold and innovative architectural works, many of which are located in Southern California.

He was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 1989. Nearly a decade later, he unveiled his most iconic design, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, which earned him international acclaim.

Encouraged by this, Gehry continued to demonstrate his adventurous spirit in subsequent projects, including the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Beekman Tower in New York, and the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris.