Prevalent architect and pioneer of modern architectural design, Frank Gehry, passed away on Friday, December 5th, at his home in Santa Monica, California, at the age of 96. Gehry was known for his complex approach to structural design. Often cultivating eye-catching and publicly criticized structures, Gehry approached architecture based on artfulness, expansive thought, and disrupting the societal flow of designing (New York Times).
His buildings embrace awkwardness and obscurity, and were built with deep meanings impacting people, buildings, cities, and culture. As seen in some of his structures, such as the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain (1997) and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles (2003), Gehry skewed away from the cold and formulaic modernist buildings that started defining skylines.
In 1947, Gehry and his family immigrated to Los Angeles, and he began taking night classes at Los Angeles City College which influenced his later career. He then studied architecture at the University of Southern California and later studied city planning at Harvard University. He worked for many architectural firms, including those of Victor Gruen in Los Angeles and Angre Remondet in Paris. Using the knowledge and experience he gained working for these firms, Gehry established his own companies: Frank O. Gehry & Associates, in 1962, and later Gehry Partners in 2002 (Britannica).
Gehry formed his own style of architecture that caught the attention of the public for his “strange” design. He treated each commission as “a sculptural object, a spatial container, a space with light and air” greatly influencing the outcome of his projects. He appreciated diverging from normalized designs to emphasize unique ideas and a distinct approach. Gehry experimented with quirky structures and contextual integrity through renovations to his own home in Santa Monica, California. He stripped the two-story home down to its frame and built a chain link and corrugated-steel frame around it. He embraced asymmetrical uses of steel rod and glass (The Millie Vintage).
Two of our seniors were quite impressed by Gehry’s style. Emma Sanchez stated, “Frank Gehry’s architecture makes buildings feel like they’re moving, turning solid structures into expressive, sculptural spaces.” Fellow classmate, Annie Landers, said, “I think his structures are really unique and each design is different from the other so it’s interesting to look at his work.”
His most notable and older works include The Vitra Museum and Factory located in Weil am Rhein, Germany, which was completed in 1989, and Fred and Ginger in Prague, built between 1992-1996 (Britannica).
The Vitra Museum and Factory was Gehry’s first completed building in Europe. The design for Vitra, the pioneering Swiss furniture company, was meant to display a creative pivot point and representation of a different extension of modernism. Created with curved sides, swooping protrusions, and stark edges, the project became associated with Deconstructivism, a new architectural movement challenging traditional harmony, stability, and order using fragmentation and asymmetrical shapes. Deconstructivism is known for embodying “controlled chaos,” one of Gehry’s key ideas (New York Times).
One of his most recent works, gaining a lot of popularity and recognition, is The Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, France, completed in 2014. In this project, he diverted from his method using steel panels, and replaced them with sheets of billowing glass to depict gracefulness and wonder. He took inspiration from earlier buildings using glass, like the Belle Époque Grand Palais built for the Exposition Universelle (New York Times).
Looking back at Frank Gehry’s contributions to the world of architecture, the world celebrates his unique outlook on structural designs and the lasting impact he made on what modern architecture may look like in the future.
