Frank Gehry was a “star architect” who even appeared in an episode of “The Simpsons.”

The architect Frank Gehry, considered a master of deconstructivism and who created numerous iconic works, from the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao to the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, died this Friday at the age of 96. This happened at their home in Santa Monica, California, “after a brief respiratory illness,” they said in an email from their company. The Canadian, born in Toronto in 1929, was perhaps the greatest of the so-called star architects. This is an elite group that includes Renzo Piano, Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid and Norman Foster, and why not also the Uruguayan Rafael Vigñoli, the Brazilian Oscar Niemeyer, the Mexican César Barragán and the Argentine César Pelli. Like several of those mentioned, Gehry enjoyed his fame but loathed the label of star architect.

Motto. “There are people who design buildings that are not technically or financially good, and others who do; these are two categories, simple ones,” Frank Gehry told the British newspaper The Independent in 2009. His artistic genius and boldness were expressed in his complex designs, such as the twelve “sails” that encase eleven volumes of white fiber-reinforced concrete and give the Louis Vuitton Foundation building in Paris the effect of a giant caravel. In addition, Gehry added a rainwater recovery system through the glass roof, whose thirteen thousand five hundred square meters are made up of unique, custom-shaped panels.

Gehry popularized contemporary architecture and became such a prominent figure that he even appeared in an episode of The Simpsons. “I work with clients who respect the art of architecture,” he said in 2014, according to his biographer Paul Goldberger.

Name change. Frank Gehry was born Frank Owen Goldberg in Toronto on February 28, 1929, to a Jewish family that moved to the United States in the late 1940s. But this architect changed his last name to Gehry to avoid becoming a target of anti-Semitism.

He studied architecture at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, graduating in 1954 before entering the U.S. Army. He later continued his education in urban planning at Harvard University, but did not complete the program. Between 1952 and 1966 he was married to Anita Snyder, with whom he had two children. And he married again in 1975 to Berta Isabel Aguilera, with whom he had two more children.

His career began in the studio of architect Victor Gruen, a pioneer in shopping center design in Los Angeles (USA). He then moved to Paris to work with André Remondet. After returning to California, he opened his own studio in the early 1960s. The 1970s and 1980s marked the beginning of a long series of bold and innovative architectural achievements, many of them in Southern California.

Gehry’s deconstructivist and experimental style is close to California’s avant-garde “funk” art scene and is difficult to categorize. Recognized by their irregularly shaped metal facades, which can look like crumpled paper, many of his buildings could only be realized using computer design tools, which Gehry fully embraced. One of the works in which this is best reflected is the 1978 remodel of his own home in Santa Monica, where he lived for a long time. There the corrugated iron surrounds the original construction from the 1920s. Gehry ended the 1980s with the highest architectural honor: the Pritzker Prize, which he was awarded in 1989. César Pelli was on the jury for this “Oscar of Architecture” for four years, although he never won it despite being nominated in 2013.

Bilbao effect. Almost a decade later, Gehry presented perhaps his most emblematic design: the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, which brought him international recognition and fame. The limestone and glass work, with curved walls clad in titanium flakes, is easily recognizable as a Gehry design and was once described by his American colleague Philip Johnson as “the greatest building of our time”.

Designing these heterogeneous shapes required software from the aerospace industry and the use of mountain climbers to attach the nearly 33,000 panels of ultra-light titanium to the facade. This museum contributed to the revival of the old industrial center of this city in the Basque Country and attracted an average of one million visitors from all over the world. This gave rise to the phrase “Bilbao Effect” to explain how the beauty of architecture can transform a geographical area. In Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, Gehry built a new Guggenheim Foundation next to the Louvre, which was built by Jean Nouvel, another Pritzker Prize winner.

Techno. Many of Frank Gehry’s designs require complex calculations, which he pushed to the limit. For a while, architects eschewed rounded or curved shapes because they caused headaches for engineers and led to a sharp increase in construction costs. Gehry resisted this and used 3D modeling software similar to that used by aerospace companies. In this way he managed to create unique forms and keep the costs in line with what the builders were willing to pay for a more conventional building, not initially for “a Gehry”. The Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas, whose walls and windows appear to have melted in the desert sun, is a classic example of his innovative vision. “I love work. I love solving problems,” Gehry told the British newspaper The Guardian in 2019.