Frank O. Gehry, Pritzker Prize laureate and creator of the Guggenheim Museum, left us at the age of 96.
Frank O. Gehry, one of the most important and original architects in the history of American architecture, died on Friday at the age of 96 at his home in Santa Monica, California. Gehry was, among other things, a co-author of the design of Prague’s Dancing House. The head of his office confirmed the information about his death, TASR writes, according to a report by The New York Times (NYT).
The laureate of the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1989 died after a short respiratory illness. According to the NYT, one of his largest and most famous works is the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. The titanium-clad structure in the town on the northern coast of Spain caused an international sensation when it opened in 1997. She helped revitalize the city and made Gehry the best-known American architect since Frank Lloyd Wright.
Important works
His other significant works include the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, completed in 2003, and the Fondation Louis Vuitton art museum (2014) in Paris. The dancing house in Prague’s lucrative Rašín embankment on the right bank of the Vltava, completed in 1996, was designed by Vlad Milunič, a Czech of Croatian origin. Its unusual asymmetrical shape was inspired by the famous American dancing couple Ginger and Fred.
However, he came to the attention of the architectural world already in 1978 with the completion of the house in Santa Monica, California, which he designed and in which he lived for four decades.
Life story
He was born Frank Owen Goldberg on February 28, 1929 in a working class neighborhood of Toronto, Canada. However, since 1947 he lived in the American Los Angeles, where he immigrated with his family. In 1954, he received a degree in architecture from the University of Southern California. After serving in the army, he studied urban planning at Harvard University. In 1962, he founded his own firm in Los Angeles, where he initially dealt with shopping center projects and similar commercial orders.
He left behind his wife Berta, daughter Brina, sons Alejandro and Samuel. Another daughter, Leslie, died of cancer in 2008, AP reports.
