Frank Gehry Dies at 96: The Man Who Gave Cities Swooping Roofs and Fish Shapes

Frank Gehry, the architect whose wild, curving buildings turned heads from Bilbao to his home base in Los Angeles, died Friday at his Santa Monica home after a short respiratory illness. He was 96. Meaghan Lloyd, chief of staff at Gehry Partners, confirmed it to the Los Angeles Times.

Gehry showed up in L.A. as a teenager right after high school in 1947, tagging along with his parents from Toronto. Born Frank Owen Goldberg on February 28, 1929, he changed his last name to Gehry in 1954—his ex-wife Anita Snyder pushed for it after he got passed over for an architecture fraternity because he was Jewish, he later told writer Barbara Isenberg. He studied ceramics and architecture at L.A. City College and USC, got his bachelor’s in 1954, served in the Army till 1956, worked for Victor Gruen and others, dipped into Harvard for urban planning, and spent time in Paris before hanging his own shingle in L.A. in 1962 (New York Times).

From Pink Bungalow to Global Fame

Early jobs stuck close to modernist boxes, but Gehry pulled from L.A.’s messy streetscape—think chain-link fences and corrugated metal. His own Santa Monica bungalow, bought with second wife Berta Aguilera in 1977, got gutted and reclad in raw materials. That pink house put him on the map. Local commissions followed: Loyola Law School buildings, the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA (once a warehouse in Little Tokyo), and his 1965 studio for designer Lou Danziger on Melrose.

Then came the big ones. The Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain opened in 1997—curvy titanium over the Nervión River, kickstarting the “Bilbao Effect” (Bloomberg) where his designs pulled tourists and buzz. Cities chased that magic, dubbing guys like him “starchitects” (N.Y.T.). Walt Disney Concert Hall in L.A. followed in 2003, a stainless-steel beacon over Bunker Hill that sounds great inside too. Other hits: Bard College’s Fisher Center in New York, Chicago’s Jay Pritzker Pavilion, Paris’ Fondation Louis Vuitton in 2014 with glass sails in the Bois de Boulogne.

Not everything landed soft. The Experience Music Project in Seattle (2000) drew gripes for looks over function, and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, announced in 2006, still sits delayed—now eyeing 2026, per the LA Times.

Guggenheim Bilbao (1997): Revived a riverside and architecture’s mojo.
Walt Disney Concert Hall (2003): Filled L.A.’s civic gap with shine and acoustics.
Fondation Louis Vuitton (2014): Glass curves that balance wild energy with polish.

Awards and His Own Words

Gehry stacked prizes: Pritzker Prize, AIA Gold Medal in 1999 (he joked to the crowd of giants like Philip Johnson that it felt like “big brothers love me after all”), Presidential Medal of Freedom. In a 2004 NPR chat, he said buildings for music should be joyful: “I’ve always been for optimism and architecture not being sad.” Biographer Paul Goldberger called him the only great artist he knew who craved people’s love for his work.

Why Frank Gehry Leaves a Hole

Gehry ditched postwar boxes for fish-inspired swirls—possible thanks to his firm’s digital tricks and aerospace tech. Critics hit him for chaos or overruns, but his best stuff hit human notes: light, shadow, scale that fits people. Disney Hall proved he could make landmarks that work. Bilbao showed one building could remake a city. L.A. feels his stamp everywhere, from Grand Avenue to his own remodeled spots. He chased feeling over cold modernism, and that pushy optimism? Architecture won’t feel as fun without it (Washington Post).