Famed Architect and Designer Frank Gehry Dies at 96

In 1947, the family moved to California, where Gehry drove a truck and did other odd jobs as he struggled to find his way. Then, remembering his love of art and his childhood fascination with building structures from whatever was at hand, he decided to take some architecture classes. He went on to earn a degree at the University of Southern California School of Architecture in 1954. After a stint in the Army, Gehry studied city planning at Harvard but left disillusioned before completing the program. He also worked for an architect in Paris, where he took inspiration from Romanesque churches as well as the Cubist works of Picasso and Le Corbusier.

The young architect moved back to Los Angles in 1962 to establish his own firm. By then he was going by the less-Jewish sounding name of Gehry, a change made at the urging of his first wife, who was worried about anti-Semitism.

Gehry divorced that wife, Anita Snyder, with whom he had two daughters, Brina and Leslie, who died in 2008 of cancer. He had two sons with his second wife, Berta Isabel Aguilera, whom he married in 1975.

In his early years, Gehry focused on commissions in Southern California: mostly private residences, museums and academic buildings. He began to be noticed nationally with a line of furniture made from corrugated cardboard but really broke out when he redesigned his own home in Santa Monica in 1978. Taking cues from the art of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, Gehry renovated the 1920 bungalow by wrapping plywood, corrugated metal and chain-link fencing around it. While his neighbors were appalled, Gehry’s imaginative redesign gained the attention of critics, who were enthralled by his daring.  

“I approach each building as a sculptural object, a spatial container, a space with light and air, a response to context and appropriateness of feeling and spirit,” he once explained in the book Contemporary Architects.

The Luma Arles tower in Arles, France was designed by Gehry. “I approach each building as a sculptural object, a spatial container, a space with light and air, a response to context and appropriateness of feeling and spirit," Gehry said during an interview for a book.

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Later, when so many of Gehry’s buildings appeared to defy gravity but were still built on budget, it was thanks to his firm’s pioneering use of software technology. His Gehry Technologies employs a 3D computer modeling program first used in the aerospace industry to design complex shapes and curves that relay a sense of movement.  

The results have been striking. In the United States, Gehry’s creations include the luminous IAC Building and the rumpled 8 Spruce Street in New York, the curving Walt Disney Concert Hall that injected new life into dowdy downtown Los Angeles, and the mind-bending Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas.

Besides Bilbao, his signature buildings abroad include the Dancing House in Prague, the Biomuseo in Panama, the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris and the Opus Hong Kong. He also designed the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, D.C., one of the most controversial projects of his career.

Gehry did more than design buildings, though. He held teaching positions at numerous universities, including the University of Southern California, Harvard, UCLA and Yale. He also designed furniture, stage sets, jewelry and even a yacht.

He did have his critics. Some accused him of merely creating corporate brands or catering to the global elite. But their voices were in the minority.

In September 2025, he discussed with Alta his experience working with difficult clients, especially those requesting that he design a house for them. 

“I’m open if they’re nice people,” Gehry explained. “If they’re friendly, well-intentioned, then I work with them. I don’t do many houses anymore.” 

Gehry designed the famous Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. The architect was showered with dozens of honorary degrees and awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.

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Gehry was showered with dozens of honorary degrees and awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.

In 1989, he received the highest award in his field, the Pritzker Architecture Prize. Jurors summed up his impact by calling him “refreshingly original and totally American,” and though “sometimes controversial,” they concluded that his was a “restless spirit that has made his buildings a unique expression of contemporary society and its ambivalent values.”