Few architects will have had as much impact on their era and left a mark on the urban landscape as Frank Gehry who has just died in Santa Monica, California at the age of 96. Born Ephraim Owen Goldberg in 1929 in Toronto, he grew up in a modest Jewish family before emigrating to California in 1947. After studying architecture at USC (University of Southern California), in 1952 he adopted the name Frank Gehry. The trigger came during a conference by Alvar Aalto in Los Angeles: Gehry understood that his passion for materials could be expressed in the design of buildings. He founded his practice in Los Angeles in 1962.

First sought after for commercial projects and somewhat classic residences, he quickly stood out for his experimental domestic constructions: the house of the painter Ron Davis (1968) or that of the actor Dennis Hopper (1970-81) already playing on trapezoidal volumes and undulating roofs. The radical transformation of his own house in Santa Monica in the 1970s – a superposition of folded metal sheets and offset volumes – scandalized local residents but affirmed his brutalist style. From the age of 50, Gehry abandoned commercial commissions to concentrate on large cultural and museum commissions.

In the 1990s, his career took a global turn. He acquired global fame with the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (opened in 1997), designed using French software (CATIA) which allows his tormented shapes to be manufactured. This sparkling titanium building launches the famous “Bilbao effect” on an urban and cultural level. He then went on to numerous other flagship projects: the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles (2003), a musical center covered in titanic curves, the Jay Pritzker pavilion in Chicago (2004) for open-air concerts, as well as the 8 Spruce Street tower in New York (2011) whose corrugated stainless steel envelope punctuates the horizon.

In France, Frank Gehry also left several major achievements. We owe him in particular the former American Center in Paris, inaugurated in 1994 and today housing the Cinémathèque française. More recently, he designed the spectacular Louis-Vuitton Foundation (inaugurated in 2014) in the Bois de Boulogne, whose glass and titanium “sails” seem to melt into the landscape. He also designed the Luma Foundation tower in Arles (completed in 2021), a multi-faceted reflective glass, illustrating his taste for bold structures.

The architect is famous for his radical formal vocabulary: he uses “free” shapes and fragmented volumes breaking with academic geometry. Its envelopes are sculptural and often undulating, made from raw industrial materials – folded sheet metal, polished titanium, stainless steel, raw wood, glass – transformed into living textures. Gehry himself spoke of buildings as “melted ice cream” or “cocoons in metamorphosis”. He also compared his drawing to music – “I draw buildings as if I were writing music” – emphasizing the rhythmic and organic dimension of his creations. However, several critics point to the preeminence of the exterior envelope to the detriment of an interior that is often cold and unfriendly.

Conceptually, Frank Gehry is part of a “deconstructivist” heritage, freeing architecture from classical constraints. Its broken and detached forms confront the rules of straight line: as explained The WorldGehry (like Zaha Hadid) “liberated” architecture from the right angle and the immutable canons of beauty, going so far as to undermine the logic of “utility” expected of a building.

His influences are multiple: he cites North American modernism (his beginnings with Victor Gruen, pioneer of malls) and the discovery of Le Corbusier during a stay in Paris, while willingly reinterpreting Asian references (for example the Japanese Shōsōin heritage) to arrive at his hybrid and lyrical volumes.

Among his many awards, Gehry has received the most prestigious awards in the profession. He is the winner of the Pritzker Prize (1989), often considered the “Nobel” of architecture. He also received Gold Medals from the American Institute of Architects (1999) and the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (1998). In France and abroad, he is honored at the highest level: Commander of the Legion of Honor in 2014 and recipient of the American Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016, to name only these major distinctions.

Gehry Partners, led by Meaghan Lloyd, indicated that the architectural firm would continue operations. Based in Los Angeles, it employs 160 people. Several projects are underway. In London, two residential towers of the Battersea Power Station project were approved in 2025. In Los Angeles, construction of the Colburn Center was progressing. The Guggenheim Museum Abu Dhabi is expected in the coming months. In France, on the other hand, no major public projects are active.